Rubicon
by LexLuthor13
Summary: Sequential to Il Principe but unnecessary to read that story to understand this one. Allen O'Neill finds himself confronted with the truth about Luthor's dark side. How will he react? Featuring Tim Drake, Morgan Edge, and the Man of Steel himself!
1. Impression

Lex Luthor, he's DC's property. As is the LexCorp Tower, the Daily Planet, Morgan Edge, Tim Drake, Superman, and the city of Metropolis. Allen O'Neill, he's mine.

_**Rubicon**_

_"The greatest evil is not...done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."_

_-C.S. Lewis _

* * *

The day I left for college, as I was ready to set out—leave one world behind and enter another—my father stopped me short of the front door. I turned around to see him, and he held out his close-fisted hand to me.

"Here. This is yours."

"What is it?" I asked.

My father uncurled his fingers. In the concavity of his palm was a wadded ball of cash. I couldn't see the different types of bills, but there were a lot ofFranklins. I looked up at my father through a narrow, bemused glare.

"It's…three thousand dollars."

"No. Dad, I—"

"I. Insist."

My brow furled in confusion.

"I want you to take this money," my father said unsteadily. "And don't ever come back."

That was how it began.

"Three thousand dollars?"

"Yeah."

"That must be a sizable extraction from your father's paycheck, Allen."

"Yeah. It sure is, Lex."

The first place I went, before checking into the dorms at the University of Metropolis , was the LexTower. In the intervening time—approximately seven weeks—between Lex's offer for me to come live him and the day classes started at the University, I had been going to see Lex less frequently. For no apparent reason, his eerily penultimate late-night visit to offer me another home sort of shocked me away from him for a long time.

I finally worked up the nerve to drive into Metropolis and talk to him. Surprisingly, he welcomed me back with aplomb—warmly, as if nothing had happened.

Of course, since I had refused his all-too generous offer, things had changed. Or so I suspected. There were, obviously, no physical indications of change. But I had spent enough time around Lex to come to appreciate and notice his…intricacies. The way he conducted himself told me was proof of that.

But things had changed. Or so I told myself.

"Allen."

I shocked myself back to reality, hastily replying, "What—oh…I'm sorry Lex."

"That's alright. People daydream…things happen. And you try to roll with it."

"Yeah," I replied pensively.

Lex smirked, reclined in his chair and steepled his fingers.

"What are you doing, Allen?"

"You ask that every time I come here, and every time I give you the same answer."

"True. But it's never stopped me from asking."

"No," I muttered.

"Right," he said darkly. Then, rising from his chair, Lex turned to the window and clasped his hands together behind his back.

"What are you looking at?" I asked, looking around his frame at the amber-hued cityscape.

"The future," he said effortlessly.

"Future…" I repeated confoundedly.

"Yes," he said, turning his head back to me slightly. Abruptly, he changed subjects.

"So when do you move in? To the University."

"Today," I said lightly.

Lex turned around to face me, and shifted his hands down into his pockets.

"I wanted to stop by here first." There was no reason behind the visit really. Part of me simply enjoyed the pleasure of Lex's company. The other part felt an almost-unnecessary desire for attention, which Lex supplied so aptly.

"Do you need help moving in?"

"What?"

"It's no problem if you do. I can have Hope give you a hand."  
"No that's alright," I replied hastily. "They've probably got more important things to do around here."

"Believe me, they don't. They're my personal security detail—they go where I tell them."

"Alright," I said reluctantly. "But I'm not sure I'll need 'em."

"If you don't, just tell them to leave. That simple. Besides, you want to make a first impression on your college-mates—a lasting one anyway. Mercy and Hope have a way of doing that."

I raised my eyebrow curiously.

Hope followed me in her personal car, a Cadillac Seville, and helped lug a few boxes up to my second-floor room. My room was located at the end of a short hallway, flanked on either side by narrow, dirt-brown doors that led to dorm rooms of their own. Hope stood behind me, waiting patiently as I fumbled the room key out of my pocket. As I slid the key into the lock, the door to my right shot open.

A boy, taller than me, slid into the hallway between me and Hope, and removed his green skullcap revealing short black hair. He wore rimless glasses that sat loosely on the end of his nose. His face was…flawless. No stubble, no signs of puberty remaining; young for his age, probably not a day older than 17. Narrow black sideburns extended from his skull down to the curvature of his jaw, and curled back slightly when he smiled and introduced himself.

"Hi. The name's Jesse Wright."

"Allen O'Neill," I said shortly, a hint of amusement in my voice at this kid's straightforwardness.

"Having trouble with your key?" he asked. I grumbled and formulated a snarky remark to throw back at him. I decided against it. He seemed like a nice kid, even though we had known each other for about five seconds.

"Yeah," I said laboriously.

"You gotta turn it towards the wall. It's screwy like that."

I followed suit, and pushed the door open. Looking back at Jesse, I smiled and said "thanks."

"No problem. Need some help with those boxes?" He asked, referring to the cardboard cube I had delegated to the floor.

"Yeah. If you're able," I joked.

"No worries there," he countered as Hope pushed past him.

I set the box containing my bed furnishings on the as-such unfurnished mattress and turned back to Hope, who was carrying the box labeled "desk"—my laptop PC and basic school supplies.

"You can throw that on the floor, Hope."

With a courteous smile, she set it down. "Is there anything else?"

"Yeah, the television and box fan are down in my car, if you'd bring those in."

She turned to leave, striding confidently down the hall. Jesse craned his head through the open door to watch her go. I opened the "desk" box and began hooking up my laptop, when I saw Jesse standing still, gaping awkwardly down the hall at long-gone Hope.

"Easy turbo," I ribbed.

Shocking himself back to reality, Jesse turned back to me with dancing eyes. "Hot," he said.

"What?"

"The lady that's with you…"

"Oh…that," I said dismissively.

"Mother?" he asked plainly, and then more pressingly: "sister?"

"No," I said flatly. "Just a friend."

"That's what JFK said when Norma Jean started singing to him."

"Uh…yeah…" I trailed off, my eyes roving about the room. I went to the window and lifted the canvas shade. Outside, in the small back parking lot to my dorm, a green Jaguar was parked in the first space. Frowning, I tried to make out the license plate, but it was too far away to see. I snapped my fingers and turned back to Jesse.

"Whatcha lookin' at?" he asked furtively.

"The squirrels," I replied dryly.

"Funny."

"Yeah. I thought so.

A pause.

"I'm gonna go check on Hope," I said.

"Uh…I'll come with," he said, excited at the prospect of face-time with Hope, and fell in step behind me.

* * *

Next: **_Things get worse!_**

_Or do they?_

**_You be the judge!_**


	2. Character

"Character is power."

_--Booker T. Washington

* * *

_

They say money—the physical concept—can't change a person, but I disagree. People always change…it's what we do; one of those facts of life we just have to get used to. Money just makes the switch more easily digestible.

And I'm reminded of that old Bob Dylan song:

_How does it feel, to be out on your own? With no direction home…a complete unknown…like a Rolling Stone… _

And I wonder: _am I really the pariah I'm making myself out to be_?

_It remains to be seen, Alley. Just roll with this little thing we call college. You might just like it. _

_That's what scares me. _

For all intense purposes, I was a fish out of water. Freshman journalism major at the University of Metropolis. And I'd be lying if I said I was enjoying it.

Jesse and I reached the ground floor and bounded out the double-doors to the back parking lot—which wasn't really a lot, more of an odd arrangement of a handful of spaces designed for the sole purpose of move-in day.

The degraded asphalt cracked under our feet as we approached the parking lot. The figure from inside the green Jaguar step out and straighten his tie.

It was Lex. Unsurprisingly. Smiling curtly, he approached me. Behind him, walking perfectly upright with her arms held tightly at her side was Mercy. As he approached, Hope lifted the last of my belongings out of the car and slammed the trunk. Lex stopped and turned to her.

"Well, Hope, how is everything going here?"

"Fine Lex," she said, wiping her brow. "Everything's fine."

"Good." He turned back to me.

"And how are you, Allen? Everything working out?"

"So far, yeah."

It was at this point that I noticed that Jesse, my impromptu tagalong, was gaping absentmindedly at Lex. His jaw hung lazily, saliva collecting at the corners of his gaping mouth, his eyes glazed over with child-like wonderment. I patted his shoulder and brought him around.

"I—I'm sorry," he said.

"It's okay," I said with a chortle. "Jesse, this is Lex Luthor. Lex…Jesse."

"Pleasure to meet you," Lex said and offered his hand towards Jesse. Jesse took it, still wide-eyed. Lex pulled his own hand back tersely, glanced at it dubiously, as if Jesse had just infected him with some disease, and slid his hands into his pockets.

Jesse instantly realized his mistake and stepped back, staring at the ground for a moment.

"So, Lex, you, uh, wanna see my room?"

"Certainly," he said with a reassuring smile. Going past me, Lex put his arm around Jesse's shoulder and inquired.

"So where are you from Jesse?"

" Star City."

Their conversation drifted away, inaudible, and I approached Hope, who was starting up her Cadillac. I pulled a twenty out of my pocket and held it out to her.

"Thanks for helping me out."

"You're welcome. But I'm not taking that."

"I insist."

Rolling her eyes, Hope snatched the bill out of my palm.

I returned to my room to find Jesse lying on the bed, Lex was sitting in the desk chair. My dorm room was situated at the end of a short hallway, flanked by two similar, albeit, larger, rooms. Aside from the three rooms at the end of the hallway, there were three more rooms further up the hall. Each room was a single, with a long single bed near the windows, a desk with University-supplied computer systems, and two chairs... all in all, pretty standard fare, but not too bad as dormitories go. _The University of Metropolis sure did care about their students, now didn't they?_ The bathroom down the hall wasn't in bad shape, either. There were two sinks, a stall where the toilet was, and a single shower with a drab white plastic shower curtain.

Lex and Jesse were watching the Metropolis Generals game—Metropolis' contribution to the National Basketball Association. I stood in the open threshold for some time, while Lex and Jesse provided color commentary.

"Aw," Jesse muttered in response to what was going on at the game.

"What?" Lex asked, pulling a cigarette out of his jacket.

"They never call traveling."

Lex chuckled quietly and brought a Zippo up to the unlit cigarette. "Allen, your friend here is quite amusing."

"Yeah," I said curtly. "You can't smoke that in here."

Lex stared at me narrowly for a short moment, and then slid the cigar back inside his jacket slowly, fluidly.

"Sorry," I offered. "University policy."

"Certainly. Wouldn't want to….upset the natural order would we?"

Jesse stepped in. "Mr. Luthor—"

"Lex, my boy. You must call me Lex."

"Alright," Jesse said dubiously, sidestepping the issue. "What brings you to our neck of the woods?"

"I have a meeting with the Dean of Students at four o'clock. I figured I'd stop by Allen's new abode and see how things were."

I checked my watch. 3:45.

"Things…are fine," I said pressingly.

"Excellent," he said, self-satisfied. Lex checked his watch, and stood. "Then, if that's all you have, I've got a meeting to get to."

I sidestepped to let him through. "See you in a few, Lex."

"Oh, I'd count on it," he said darkly, his voice fading as he walked down the hall to the elevator. I watched him go, and then turned back to Jesse. He reclined his head into my pillows—**my** pillows—and spoke.

"Wow," Jesse said smugly impressed by the enigmatic billionaire who had just left his company.

"What?"

"Luthor. I like him."

"What?" I asked, annoyed and perplexed.

"He certainly is one of a kind. How'd you come by him?"

"Dumb luck," I said bluntly, a smile creasing across my face. "Call me eager to please."

"Fair enough," Jesse said lazily. "He's pretty cool. You two related?"

"Nope." I sat down at the desk and started configuring the computer—an antiquated model that ran on Windows 98. _Yikes_. With an amused smile, I questioned Jesse.

"Jess…why is it you think everyone who comes in here is related to me?"

"Men's intuition," he said dryly, working a laugh from me. "No one gets anywhere in this town without a little help from friends…or family."

"I didn't think 'we' believed in intuition."

"**I** do," he countered.

"That's nice," I said. "Now…I think I'm gonna jump in the shower."

"Alright," Jesse said. "I think I'm gonna get some more stuff squared away."

"'Kay," I said. "See ya."

"Yeah."

My shower was a nice break from the wears of the day. For a long while, I turned the water on, and leaned my head forward under the showerhead, the hot water running down the curvature of my back. And I thought.

About my parents. About Sara, my once and future lover who had made her disdain for Luthor clear. This much was true: I had no one now. Except Luthor. And Jesse.

Jesse, who I had known for scant minutes, was already warming up to me; the kind of guy who would follow you anywhere, because he believed in you. Whether or not that was true, I still believed it, which was a foolish notion at best. Our relationship had started on a whim, eerily reminiscent of another such story involving Metropolis' charismatic billionaire.

In any event, I made myself a promise there in the shower. I would not allow what happened to Luthor and I to happen between Jesse and I. As opposed to my latter day attempts at friendship through Tim Drake, and love through Sara Andrews, I swore that I would build a friendship with Jesse. _A lasting one._

It was odd nonetheless, because even though I had turned down Lex's more-than gratuitous offer, he still appreciated me. Still admired me. And that was a comforting thought.

I stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around my waist, and walked the brief few steps down the hall to my room.

By the time I heard someone knocking at the door, I was fully dressed. Pulling the heavy brown door open, I saw Jesse standing meekly before me. He was wringing his hands, and he slouched terribly.

"What's with the hunch? Are you rehearsing a play about Richard Nixon?" I asked playfully, jesting at his haggard appearance and grizzled scowl.

"There are these people in the next mod down," he murmured. A mod was the main thoroughfare to get to either one of the two wings on this particular side of the building.

"And…?"

They asked me if I wanted to go out with 'em to some parties."

"Kinda early, don't you think?" I replied, marginally surprised. It was, after all, only about 5 in the afternoon.

I went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Red Bull, offered it to Jesse.

"No thanks."

"Alright," I said, cracking it open. "So what do you want to do?"

"Well…anything but that."

Silence.

"Tell me about yourself. Where are you from?"

I scoffed snidely. "I'd tell you my story….but it's got more twists than an Agatha Christie novel."

Jesse nodded and sat in the desk chair that Lex had occupied a brief time ago. He discovered the remote, and turned the TV to WGBS—the only 'good' television on at the moment. _So much for a story_, I thought.

I inched my way across the room to the combined microwave-refrigerator, opened it, and held up a bottle of water within Jesse's range of vision.

"Uh, no thanks," he said dismissively. I shrugged and started drinking from it.

"What's on the news?" I asked.

"Your friend has just donated a hefty sum to the university."

I looked down at the television, and saw Lex shaking hands with the President of the University. Cat Grant announced that Lex's donation of five million dollars would be enough to name a residence hall after him. I let out a curious peep, and Jesse looked up at me. _Lex makes five million dollars in the course of an hour. What's he up to?_

"What's up?" Jesse asked innocently.

"…Nothing," I said, shifting topics. "You wanna get something to eat?"

"Sure."

We found a small deli on the outskirts of campus, and sat on the outside portico to eat our sandwiches. As we watched traffic whiz by, Jesse started into his BLT, his voice muffled through the amalgamation of bread, bacon, and mayonnaise.

"So, Jesse."

"Mm," he muffled as he downed half of his sandwich. "What?"

"We hardly know each other. Tell me about yourself."

"I'm from Star City and I enjoy long walks on the beach," he said jokingly.

"Wow," I said. "You've come quite a way."

"Yeah, it's my little experiment," he said haughtily. "Get as far away from home as possible, and see what happens."

"Sounds plausible," I said, cutting into my turkey club. "So you're just sort of rolling with it for now?"

"Yeah. I mean, I'm not out to please anyone. Never have been."

I chuckled and polished off the last of my sandwich.

"But if you must know," Jesse added, "I've got a nice…contingency to fall back on."

Jesse followed me back to my room—mostly because I offered him food. Short of entering the room, I stopped and stared at the door. I had posted a dry-erase marker board just below the peephole earlier in the day. In our absence, someone had come along and left me a note:

"Sorry I missed you. Give me a call later. You know the number. Sara."

* * *

**_Next: Insight!_**


	3. Insight

_Sara…_

The very name evoked feelings of misery and hatred from the bowels of my soul. She had taken me down a path I would not have wished upon my worst enemy. She'd brought me a pain that only a woman could. It was because of Sara—because of all the people who said Lex was bad for me—that I continued to visit the CEO at the head of the nation's most enterprising corporation.

Sara. The aptly named "old ball and chain". Privately I wondered what she wanted to do with me, the fruits of my midnight discussion with her still looming heavily on my mind. Jesse approached the door and glanced thoughtfully at the hastily scrawled note.

"Who's that?"

"My…girlfriend," I said spitefully. "But we haven't spoken in…months."

"Clue number one," Jesse murmured quietly as he sat down at the computer.

"What was that?"

"Oh…nothing. You mind if I check my mail?"

"No, not at all. If you can get it to work," I said distantly. "Hand me my cellular."

Engaged in his own affair, Jesse obliged, handing it across his field of vision without missing a beat.

"I'll take this downstairs," I said, already on my way out. I didn't hear Jesse's muttered response.

I dialed Sara's home number on my way down the stairs. After three rings, a female voice answered.

"Hello?"

"This is Allen O'Neill. I need to—"

"Oh Allen!" she exclaimed loudly; I found myself rip the phone away from my ear momentarily on account of her loudness. "I'm so glad you called," she continued.

"I bet you are," I said, sidestepping her gleeful questions. I wasn't about to undergo a change of mind based on whim—I was never in that business. "Now what can I do for you?"

"Oh not much. I stopped in earlier to see if you wanted to grab a bite to eat, but you weren't there."

"Yeah, I got a sandwich with a friend."

"A friend, eh?"

"Yeah," I said curtly. I found my way to the ground floor and pushed open one of the double doors leading to the back parking lot.

"He's pretty cool. Name's Jesse. From Star City."

"Wow. He must have a lot of stories."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, isn't that Green Arrow guy from Star City?"

"Yeah," I replied, puzzling over the idea of this Green Arrow guy actually existing. "I think he is."

"I'd like to meet him sometime. Why don't you bring him home on some weekend?"

"Jesse or the Green Arrow?"

"Jesse," Sara replied, unenthused.

"Yeah," I replied hesitantly. "I guess I could do that."

"Great. See you later."

"Yeah. See ya."

I disconnected the line and stared at the small phone in my hand, wondering why in all creation Sara had turned a page and decided to be nice to me. After what I pulled the last time we spoke, she should have ground me up and put me into a hamburger. _Oh well_, I thought. _Things happen. Your job isn't to question why. Just roll with the punches._

_Yup. I know._

On my way back up to my room, I couldn't stop thinking about Sara…and how nice she was to me. It wasn't overtly out of character for her, but disconcerting nonetheless.

When I got back to my room, Jesse had gone from the PC to my bed. _My fucking bed, you sleaze._ In any case, he was out like a light bulb; breathing rhythmically and making me feel oddly calmed.

"Loser," I muttered, and threw a blanket over him.

I spent the rest of the night on the PC looking at what Lex's money would be put to: a new dorm on the eastern side of campus. _Near the River. Near Strykers._

But, oddly, he was only fronting half the bill. It's not every day that a billionaire with virtually no ties to the university comes through the door and whips out his check book. But…when money talks, people listen.

After I finished looking into Lex's beneficence, I found my sleeping arrangements were limited. The floor boasted as good a place as any, but I didn't want to work through a day of backaches.

So, despite the forking-over of a few dollars, I found the only coffee shop on campus; lucky me, it was open 24 hours. Over the course of several cups of coffee, I kept replaying my conversation with Sara over and over in my head. What was unsettling about it wasn't just her chipper mood—given her usual self, she was a box of chocolates over the phone—but the way she spoke. The inflection, the way she bounced off one word and onto the next one like some mindless Valley Girl. That was not the Sara Andrews I knew.

So the only question left…who was it?

When I returned to my room, it was 4 a.m. and Jesse was still asleep on my bed, one leg thrown lazily over the edge, dangling within a few inches of the floor. When I looked up at the bed, I saw Jesse staring down at me. The action took place rapidly, and the sight of his eerie brown eyes staring down at me made me shove my back up against the door with a shriek.

With a childlike gleam in his eyes, Jesse said, "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

"Yeah," I said clutching my chest and breathing heavily. "It's…alright. You got the jump on me."

"Sorry about that."

"It's fine. So how you doing?"

"Rested and rejuvenated," he said with a yawn. "You hungry?"

I nodded in agreement and pulled a Pop-Tart out of my backpack and tossed the foil-wrapped package to Jesse. Privately, I wondered what Jesse's fascination with always eating was. _He was a little too well fed and muscled up to be a wino…or a pothead._

"So," I said as we were seated. "Sleep good last night?"

"Yeah. Had a messed up dream, though."

"Oh?" I pulled a glass bottle of Iced Tea out of the fridge.

"Yeah. I only wish I could remember it."

I snickered and started into the tea.

As I finished off my tea, I noticed Jesse was glancing dubiously at the ground, wringing his hands. _That damn Nixon routine again_, I joked to myself, trying to glaze over the oncoming gravity of the situation. Sweat trickled down his forehead. Something was eating at him, no doubts. But I couldn't be sure what it was.

"Uh…Allen?" He asked tentatively.

"Yeah?"

"Have you ever…felt a certain way about something but you were afraid…to talk about it. Because you were afraid of what someone thought of it?"

"Once or twice," I said lightly, as I flashed back to Lex and his recent decision to allow me a place in his life. He came to my house late at night and offered legal custody of me—to take me away from the iniquity--if that accurately described it--of my home. Reluctantly, I refused his offer. Since then, I had seen him, but less frequently. So the entire situation begged a thought: have I lost something in Lex only to find something in Jesse? I couldn't focus on my ongoing little crisis. Had to think about Jesse…and whatever was bugging him.

"Jesse, what is it?"

"Allen, I…" His posture slouched and weariness set across his face. "I feel I should tell you…certain things. We're friends, and the last thing I want to do is hide stuff from you."

"Hey…I respect that. You're my friend, and I'm here for you."

"That's…really nice of you to say."

"Don't mention it. Now what did you want to tell me?"

"Allen, I…" Jesse trailed off again, as my brow furled in concentration. Privately, I had a few preconceptions about what he was going to say, but no real concrete proof. _Ain't it always the way?_

Jesse glanced away momentarily, and turned back to me.

"Allen. I'm gay."

My eyes narrowed, and in the deep recesses of my mind I started searching for an answer. I was not concerned about the "why me" factor, as much as I was "poor Jesse". This was a very snobbish notion, I realized, but I remained still. Speechless.

Realizing he was out on a stretched limb, Jesse swallowed what saliva was in his mouth and his eyes began searching the room. I couldn't, obviously, read his mind; however, I did have a pretty good inkling of what was running through his head. I had been there myself a few times before.

Jesse stood, clearing his throat. His eyes darted around the room uncomprehendingly. "I…should probably go."

And Jesse left. I stood absentmindedly and walked slowly towards the door. I pulled a wad of cash out of my pocket and tossed it back on the table.

* * *

_**Next: Perspective!**_


	4. Perspective

"That's it?"

"Yeah," I said long-windedly. When all else failed, I had realized with the passage of time, Lex served as a guiding light for me. Such was the case now. Having left Jesse's company, I decided to drive into Metropolis to see Luthor. He always had a way of…putting things into perspective.

"All of it? Anything more you want to add?"

"No. That's it."

"These things happen," Lex remarked. He sat casually in his chair, behind his sprawling desk, typing away on his computer. Somehow, he still managed to carry a conversation with me.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I replied coarsely. Lex reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small sheet of paper. He began scrawling on it, but I was too far away to make out anything.

"It means this was something that was beyond your control," Lex said as he finished writing. "You had nothing to do with his decision, and now, I suspect, it's eating away at you."

"It isn't."

"But it is," Lex said with a slight grin. "You're so absorbed in yourself that you can't accept there are some things you'll never know. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It…reminds me of myself at an early age."

Lex removed a whit envelope from one of his desk drawers and slid the sheet of paper inside it. He stood, slid the envelope inside his jacket and made for the glass double-doors leading out of his office.

"Where are you going?" I said, following him.

"A man of my intellect and savvy isn't going to let nature have her way with him. I'm flying to Philadelphia for my annual checkup. You're welcome to come with me. I'm sure Dr. Elliot would be impressed with you."

"Thank, but no thanks. I've got a paper to write, and Journalism class waits for no one."

"Journalism?" Lex repeated, stopping short of the elevator. "Who is the professor?"

"Morgan Edge."

Lex turned to me. His eyes darted around for a moment, and one corner of his mouth curled upward in a suspicious grin. He shook it off.

"Mind if I follow you down?" I asked as Lex stood and made for the doors leading to the elevator. He shook his head, and I followed.

The interior of the elevator was a bronze-laden marvel of metallurgy. A narrow switchboard blended almost seamlessly into the bronze panel behind it.

In the place of traditional metal or wooden wall coverings, all the elevators in the building had bronze panels on the vertical surfaces. The panels served to dim the elevator's interior—almost to the point of mood-lighting—and give an added degree of mystery to whoever was riding with you.

As it stood right now, it was only I and Lex in the elevator and neither one of us was saying much of anything. This only made the mystery—whatever that was—pile up. I twiddled my thumbs idly and bobbed my head expectantly, waiting for one of the two of us to strike up a conversation; I wasn't about to tread unknown waters, and I got the distinct feeling that Lex was in a sour enough mood to not want to talk about anything. What struck me was how quickly his cosmetic mood had changed—in the matter of a few minutes he had gone from talkative in his office to stoic in the elevator. _Mysteries of human chemistry_, I told myself.

I turned to my left ever so slightly to see Lex. He stood relaxed. From my limited vantage, I could see his left hand fumbling around in his pockets as if rustling some loose change. The other hand, his right hand, was held in a tight fist. His knuckles were whitening in a sort of displaced anger; as if he, too, was bothered by some inevitable fact of life and knew he couldn't do anything about it. He held his head high, staring at the digital display board, which said we were close to the lobby.

"Allen."

"Yes?"

"Are you familiar…with the conquests of Alexander the Great?"

"Yeah. We spent a lot of time on him in my senior Military History class."

"Then you know about Hephaistion." Luthor's head was held high, still staring at the digital display above the doors.

I turned to Lex, raised a curious eyebrow. _Another lecture_. "Yeah. I am."

"Alexander and Hephaistion were friends from a very early age. They were both privy to each other's darkest secrets. They held each other in the highest regard, neither one willing to admit he was greater or lesser than the other. Alexander thought so highly of his soul-mate friend that he carried him into battle. He had great freedom, as anyone else to speak his own mind to the king, yet no one in the army respected Hephaistion. They felt he was unqualified, given undue privilege…undeserving—"

"Lex," I interrupted brusquely. "Cut the crap. You know as well as I do that Alexander was gay. Like Jesse. So what are you aiming for here?"

Turning to me, Lex smiled modestly, and said, "You haven't listened to a word I've said. It was about power and social position with the Greeks, especially with someone as heroically and militarily regarded as Alexander."

Lex stared at me for a brief moment before shifting his hands into his pockets. "But even Alexander couldn't admit to his feelings, if that's how you want to explicate it. In the end, Hephaistion died, broken, poor, and alone."

Silence.

"Do you understand?" Lex asked through a narrowed gaze. "This is about you and your fears of being overshadowed by an undeserving pretender."

The elevator slowed to a stop, the door dinged, and then opened. Before us, the expansive, marble and bronze-laden lobby of the LexTower lay before us like a smorgasbord for some adventurous-feeling thief.

He turned back to me, removing a white envelope from inside his jacket.

"Do not let your conscience restrain you from doing what you must."

Luthor stepped out of the elevator, handing the envelope to Mercy.

"Get this to the Planet. Make sure it's in the hands of Dirk Armstrong by the four o'clock deadline. No exceptions."

Mercy nodded promptly and Lex walked away briskly. I followed, but Mercy cut in front of me, joining up with Lex on his right side.

"When will you be back?"

"Before the end of the week. Perhaps even tomorrow," he proffered lightly. "Here," he added, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a small black jewelry box and handed it to me. It was…heavier than I expected. No ring weighs this much. Curiously, I held it in my hand and regarded it thoughtfully for a moment.

A doorman pulled a bronzen door open and Luthor stepped through effortlessly, flanked by myself, Hope and Mercy. Up ahead of us Luthor's personal car—a 1932 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost—sat parked—waiting for its master to enter.

"The item in that box will protect you from Superman. Don't open it unless you absolutely have to. Let me know how your situation with your friend works out."

"Okay," I said faintly, as the door shut and the Rolls sped away.

It took me twenty minutes to get back to campus; mid-day traffic had a way of slowing anything and everything down.

I suddenly realized I had to pee. Really bad. I ran up the stairs, bolted down the hallway burst into the small, one-shower fixture bathroom to see Jesse standing there, a towel slung low around his waist.

"Hey," I said, and went to the urinal. Jesse turned around slowly and said, "Oh…Allen. Sorry."

"That's…okay," I said with a sigh.

"You actually caught me at a bad time, Allen. I was about to jump in the shower."

"I gathered," I said, flushing and making my way back towards the door. I pushed the door open and let Jesse walk past me.

Jesse only stopped once, and that was to wrangle his keys out of his bundled-up pants. _Nothing like seeing a half-naked man locked out of his room_, I thought dubiously.

What surprised me, and caught my attention to a moderate extent, was how well Jesse apparently took care of his body. Chiseled abs. defined pectorals, broad shoulders, and strong, sinewy legs. It was also clear to me that Jesse was one of those rare guys who actually went to a tanning salon—just to get full coverage. And it showed.

Finally the door clicked over and he pushed it open, kicking his pile of clothes and shower supplies in before him. I followed him in.

I stared out the open window, felt the slight breeze amble its way in and lighten the mood. Thank God something was cutting through the tension in here.

Jesse bent over to retrieve a pair of boxers from his hamper, and pulled them on. I regarded the small black jewelry box once more before sliding it into my front pocket.

"Jesse," I said tentatively as he turned to face me. I glanced at the floor, then brought my eyes up analyze his body—the strong legs, the washboard abs.

"What is it?"

"I've gotta…go into town. I'll be back later."

"Sure," Jesse said through narrow eyes.

So I left. I went for a walk. _I go for a lot of walks._ Through the business district—conveniently close to campus. I stopped in front of the WGBS Building, and sat on a park bench outside the front door.

Why was it that my life had taken a seemingly-bad turn for the worse. Was I doomed to it? This…failure, this unending circle of events that made me feel absolutely worthless? Was it divine intervention? That seemed an extremely snobbish notion to me; _I'm no religious person by any means, and I don't think blind faith ever got anyone anywhere._

_Oh come on, Allen. It's not as bad as you think._

_Yeah. Right._

_It could be worse, you know. A lot worse._

Maybe that was the answer: this so-called higher power was punishing me for not listening. I had been listening. My whole life. Listening for answers. But they never came to me. I had worked, and sweated, and troubled, and sold myself short of achieving my own dreams. And for what? Estrangement from family…association with a man regarded far and wide as the Devil, and……why the hell did I feel _remotely_ attracted to Jesse?

So there I was, sitting on this park bench, wallowing in cheap emotion and self-loathing…and for what?

The muffled buzz of my cell phone ring jolted me back to reality and I pulled it out of my pocket and answered.

"H—hello?"

"Allen? This is Dr. Edge."

Morgan Edge was the chairman and CEO of Galaxy Communications, the second largest company in Metropolis and one of the top companies on the Fortune 500. But he was also a professor in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Metropolis. He taught my 11:00 Journalism class, and he was one of the best professors on the campus. By rights, he was a genius. Certifiably. But like all geniuses, Morgan Edge was also very eccentric. He always wore brown leather gloves—probably a symptom of his creeping obsessive-compulsive disorder—and always dressed in hideous earth-tones. Whenever he lectured, the words poured forth in luscious verbal streams, each phrase intensifying and having more meaning than the last. But the most intriguing thing about Morgan Edge?

His face was always red, and he swore worse than a sailor…and sometimes he looked like he was about to strangle the nearest breathing thing.

In any event, that was Professor Edge—the simple way he carried himself and spoke—had a certain ring to it that made the girls in class just swoon whenever they saw the trimmed brown hair, flawless grin, and hints of a five o'clock shadow.

"Allen, I'm worried about you," he said in a moderate tenor voice. "You've been late to my class every day for the past week."

"I know, sir," I interjected. "I'm trying—"

"You're failing," he said pressingly. "You've missed two papers last week alone. I feel compelled to ask, Allen. What did you think college was going to be like?"

"I know I have to work, Dr. Edge. Just give me a chance."

I checked my watch. 4:00 p.m. Damn.

"I highly suggest you get serious about my class and about this University. Now…I'm giving out a month-long reading assignment on Monday. Get it done if you want to stop form happening what almost did a few minutes ago."

"Thank you, Dr. Edge," I said uneasily, unsure if the olive branch had just been extended or broken and recast.

"Do it, O'Neill. Or else I'm failing you."

I stopped and exhaled laboriously. This was the closest I'd ever come to complete mental annihilation. In its way, it was…humbling.

"And Allen?"

"Yes?" I murmured.

"If you don't get this done, Luthor won't be there to save you."


	5. Possibility

The next morning, I opened my door to see a copy of the _Daily Planet_ lying at my feet before the door. I picked it up and slid the binding rubber band off. It fell to the ground harmlessly, and I opened the paper.

On the right side of the page, under the section marked 'In this Issue', the first item listed:

**Dirk Armstrong opines on the gay situation in Metropolis.**

_What the fuck? Who is this Armstrong and what does he think he's doing? _I blitzed through Armstrong's editorial. By the end of it, I was ready to rip the paper in two and burn it in effigy.

_Oh gee, Allen. Way to overreact_.

I burst into Jesse's room to find him lying on his bed, half asleep. His arms were folded across his chest and he watched the television with focused intensity.

"Did you see this, Jess?" I asked, my voice projecting across the room, and jolting Jesse from his half-slumber.

"What?" He asked innocently.

"This," I said bluntly as I opened the _Planet_ to the Op-Ed page and threw Dirk Armstrong's article on the bed in front of Jesse. He glanced over it for a moment and then looked back at me.

"What about it?"

"What about it?!" I responded outraged. "This guy is implying we oughta put a radio collar on every gay inside city limits.

"You'll have that," Jesse said dryly as he cruised the article.

"What do you…?"  
"It's a fact of life, Allen. Gays get that kind of treatment. It's just…the way it is."

"So it doesn't bother you that this nut job is saying gays are undermining the social order of this town?"

"No," Jesse said lightly.

"Come on, Jess," I said pressingly.

"No, Allen!" Jesse said, righting himself, his voice becoming angrier.. "Don't you get it? This is the sort of shit I have to deal with all the God-damned time. I've gotten used to it. I'm not you, and I never will be, so I won't say you should think like I do…but at least have the common sense to realize how I feel about it. This Armstrong character is just another crackpot who's got nothing better to do. So don't worry about it."

I did some online research about this Dirk Armstrong fellow. He was the conservative voice in an otherwise liberal newspaper—the _Planet_—with militant liberal Perry White at its head. Deep down, I assumed Armstrong had his reasons for writing his piece. He was just a simple man trying to make his living—admirable—but there was definitely something shady about it.

Lex called me from Philadelphia the following night.

"I read Armstrong's article too, Allen."

"And…?"

"I wouldn't worry about it. As being full of hot air goes, Armstrong is in orbit."

"And what about Morgan Edge?"

"I've known Edge for years. He doesn't seem to get any smarter," Lex said confidently. "He's…nonessential. A churlish spotlight-craver who wants nothing more than to destroy me, based on baseless accusations that are ten years old. Now what is that? I ask you…what kind of world do we live in where hearsay is the governing thought of man's rationale?"

"A shitty one, to put it crudely."

"Yes," Lex said long-windedly. "Now…don't worry about this business with Edge."

"But he said you couldn't be there to help me out, should it happen again."

"Morgan Edge doesn't scare me, Allen."

Snickering, I replied, "I don't think anyone does."

A pause.

"Lex…what does he have against you?"

"Years ago, Lois Lane exposed Edge for something he did. Something very illegal, involving some…foreign terrorists. He was put away for that crime, but recently got out and took back control of Galaxy Broadcasting."

"So…why does he hate you?" I asked uncomprehendingly.

"I was…affiliated with Lois at the time," Lex said, looking away. "He blames me…Lois and I…for everything."

"Oh," I said, still in the dark. "But…I don't know. Couldn't you just, like, buy out Galaxy?"

"I could…if I would."

"Uh-huh…"

"So you see," Lex said pressingly. "It seems my problem has become your problem."

"I don't follow."

"I hate Morgan Edge, Allen," Lex replied plainly. "And, if you believe the rumors, he's worse than me."

I scoffed and said, "That's fine, but what do you want me to do about it? I'm not exactly the Mayor or anything, you know."

"I know. That's exactly why I'm going to take Edge on my own terms."

I decided to take his words with one, big, stinking grain of salt. "Well, if you're interested, you could come to my class Monday morning. 11:00."

"We'll see," Lex said.

Privately, I felt Edge hated me because of my ties to Lex. Whatever power struggle was going on between the two of them was now boiling over to my life. Sooner or later, I feared one of them would bring me into it for their own personal gain.

They were going to carve things up, and they were going to want to take sides.

Question was: _which side to take_?

I went into Edge's class Monday morning to see a stack of green-colored papers lying on the table next to the lecturn. Bold black print on the PowerPoint overhead told the students to pick up a copy.

Edge came trouncing in at ten minutes after class was supposed to start, wearing a supremely confident grin. He heaved his briefcase up on a nearby lab table, and tried to open it. When it wouldn't open, he screamed, "God DAMN IT!" and brought his closed fist down on it hard. It sprung open and he pulled his files out.

No one in the class thought any less of him for using some rather choice language. All the girls—who were permanently camped out in the front row, that they might be at optimum Edge-viewing at all times—swooned and let out a collective sigh. _Sweet clichés of Babylon ._

"Now," Edge said, facing the class. "If you'll look at the handout in front of you, you'll see the required reading for the next month."

I glanced dubiously down at the green paper. My eyes froze when I read the assignment: Simply Brilliant, by Lex Luthor. It was the man's autobiography.

"You're gonna be reading this for the next month or so. We'll have discussion groups every Thursday, followed by a circuitous test at the end of the month, covering the breadth of knowledge in the book."

_Maybe Morgan didn't hate Lex so much after all. I mean…why read a book about the man unless you're trying to get inside his head? Trying to understand him. _

"Now," Edge went on. "In order for this study to go smoothly, I want you to disband whatever notions you have about Luthor. I'm well aware that many of you are enrolled in this college simply because of corporate scholarships that his company or he himself personally provided."

Edge's gaze centered on me and I sank back in my chair. "I don't want you to read this book and take everything as the Gospel; it isn't. As critical thinkers, your job is to objectively study this book and take from it what you will. Now…you're dismissed."

He let us go early, which almost never happened. I was, nevertheless, glad he let us go early; it gave me a change to run to the bookstore and snag a copy of Luthor's book.

_**Next: Revelation**_

**_

* * *

_**

_**Author's Note**: The title of Lex Luthor's autobiography Simply Brilliant comes from the 1989 Graphic Novel "Lex Luthor: the Unauthorized Biography" by James Hudnall and Eduardo Barreto._

_Dirk Armstrong, the decidedly right-wing Op-Ed columnist for the_ Daily Planet_, first appeared in 1996's "Man of Tomorrow #6". Morgan Edge, head of the GBS conglomerate, first appeared in 1988's "Superman #16"._


	6. Simplicity

Later in the afternoon, I decided to stop by the University Library, where the microfiche archives provide me with more information on Luthor. Edge had told us to be thorough in our critique of the book…and I was never one to disappoint.

Ever since I had first come to know Lex, he had been something of an enigma to me—always hiding his true nature in some manner or another—never telling me what exactly he was up to. His earlier erratic behavior concerning Morgan Edge was…unsettling. A man with Lex's power, with his intrigue, was not to be taken lightly in any respect. I had heard…stories. About how he offered some nondescript waitress a million bucks just to live with him. About how he…faked his own death and went to Hell to serve on something Tim Drake called a 'council of super villains'. And there were more generic stories—spun by scandal-hungry media flies like Jack Ryder. How, after Superman died and returned, Lex was fueled by unrestricted hate and anger.

Many of them were simply too outlandish to believe. Others seemed too close to call. In any event, I strode with great caution around Lex's history. He didn't like talking about it, and I never brought it up unless absolutely necessary. I respected his privacy, and he respected my thirst for knowledge. On some level, he must have known that our paths would cross someday. In a very dangerous way.

The question on both our minds was: how far out was the world that was coming? The world where Lex clashes with all his enemies. From the looks of his broiling rivalry with Edge, the world was getting closer.

Tim…Tim Drake told me once to be wary of Lex whenever he does something nice…usually, it means something bad for someone else. I took that to heart, against my better impulses.

I only wondered what possible negative effect Lex's beneficence would have on…anyone.

So there I was. Reading Lex's book and contemplating the man's dark side. _After all, everyone has one. There's no use in denying it exists, or even squelching its power._ Lex's dark side, I suspected for some odd reason, was especially nasty.

The microfiche confirmed this. Over the years, Luthor's temper was displayed most excellently through his corporate takeovers. The owner of over a hundred smaller subsidiaries other than LexCorp, ranging from weapons manufacture to aerospace engineering and beyond, Lex's takeovers had been Napoleonic in scope—a shaking demonstration of his ego and willingness to succeed.

However, self-made billionaires—even the most antiseptic of them—don't climb the ladder without leaving a few skeletons behind them. The trick is finding those skeletons.

Edge was going to get his paper. If it killed me, I was not going to be a failure in the eyes of anyone—least of all some pious professor/billionaire who thought he was God's gift to every female student on campus. After leaving the library, I headed back home to finish the book. Three hours later, I finished it. It's what I expected: egotistical par excellence, and sanitized to the point of disparity. And that's when it came to me.

There were…holes in his narrative. I could feel a darkness creeping between the craft of the typeface. His family…is mentioned fleetingly, as if they never existed, or were a nuisance that he sought to expunge early on. After they died, he wrote, he supported himself.

I found myself opening the book and re-reading passages hat already made sense to me. _The more I read, the more I felt ill at ease. There's something amiss in the pages of Lex's book. Potholes in the road. Or more. I focus in, or try at least…and still I miss it. All I hear…is fuzz. All I've ever been hearing, for the past few months. Fuzz. Smoke. Distortion. Lies._

Like pieces of a puzzle, I put them together…and I realized something.

"Something's not right."

"What?"

"I'll say it again, Allen," Edge dictated wearily, yet sternly to me. "This paper…seems rushed, like you pulled it out of your ass at 3 in the morning."

"Dr. Edge, believe me—"

"I do…but I'm saying this isn't your best work. And I know you can do better."

"So you're not failing me?"

"No," Edge said. He pulled a business card out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me. "That's the address of the GBS Building. My office, tonight. 9 p.m."

"What do you…?"

"Just be there. Or I really will fail you."

So I went to Dr. Edge's office that night. And I took Lex with me. On some level, I subscribed to the age-old idea of 'strength in numbers'; I figured Lex, demanding presence that he is, could fill that criterion quite well. He made his disdain fro Edge quite clear. Come to think about it, Lex didn't like any of the other so-called 'billionaires' in town: Edge, Colin Thornton…and there were others, but the point was: the only person Lex really thought highly of was himself. I was on his list, yes…but chances were I was very close to the bottom.

This was not Edge's office at the university. No, he told me to go to the GBS building—which I did—and see him in his top-floor office there.

By any stretch of the imagination, Edge's office was less grandiose than Lex's—**much** less grandiose. But what it lacked in identity, the office made up for in ostentation. Edge's office was decked out in the motif of the roaring 20's. Fluorescent green-lighted lamps in every corner illuminated the ceiling and gave the illusion of space, and the whole room was dimly lit in shades of ebony and green. Glass panes formed the northern corner of the office, staring out at the Byrne Bridge into Queensland. Edge's steel-and-glass desk was situated at an angle in the corner, the gleaming city existing quietly behind him. And it was all immaculate. As if a maid had just been in to tidy it up. Whether this was Edge trying to make himself look presentable or more signs of his creeping Obsessive Compulsion…I didn't know.

I didn't bother knocking, but rather pushed my way in gently, quietly testing the water. "Dr. Edge?"

Edge was working on his computer, whittling away at God-knows-what; probably entering in a gigantic failing grade for the quarter under my name. A small post-it note was stuck to the front edge of his desk. It read 'Godfrey—10 dollars'. I regarded it for just a moment and looked back up at Edge.

Edge finally realized there was someone in his office, and rolled his chair to the front of his desk to see me.

Lex took a backseat, literally. Standing behind me with his trademark scowl, hands firmly crossed over each other, Lex's very figure conveyed a sense of supreme mastery and cunning. Edge narrowed his view and glanced scornfully at Lex, then back at me.

"Have any troubles finding the place?" he said tightly.

"It's the second biggest building in Metropolis, Dr. Edge. Hard to miss." I had to privately chuckle at my own ingenuity. Without really thinking about it, I had just insulted Morgan Edge and his 'pinch-hitter' status. Behind me, Lex snickered quietly as I sat in the leather chair before Edge's desk. Lex moved to stand behind my chair like a silent bodyguard, and he stared out the window, purposefully removing himself from the conversation about to occur.

"I wanted to talk to you about this paper."

"What's wrong with it?" I asked glibly.

"For one thing…I thought the assignment was to coldly analyze all aspects of the book. You did no such thing."

"I disagree," I said respectfully.

I saw the muscles tighten in Edge's jaw.

"Don't patronize me, Allen. I gave you this assignment for one reason: to be a better thinker. The fact that you did a poor job only tells me one thing."

I narrowed my gaze, as if peering into his soul, as Edge lit a cigarette.

"That you're either dumber than I thought, or you really don't care about passing this class. May I remind you that my class is required to meet sophomore standing?"

"That's not—"

"—Let me tell you something Allen. You were supposed to read that book and analyze it impersonally. You did neither. What you did was a sugarcoated hero-worship. And I'm getting tired of this. You can do better, and you know it. I don't like what Luthor's doing to you. You're heading down a dangerous path and I wanted to make sure I'd taken this step to….try and make you aware of it."

I wondered if Lex knew that he was the 'man god' in reference. Probably not. I reclined in my chair; my eyes began roving the office, analyzing everything from the marble elephant on the corner of his desk, to a small metal pillbox on the floor by the foot of my chair. It was probably as big as my hand, and there were small geometric lines and circles on it, and every few seconds, a metallic sound resonated from it; a continuous, barely noticeable 'ping-ping-ping'.

I exhaled laboriously and looked back to Edge.

"I understand," I said acutely. "Are we done?"

"No you don't," Edge replied dryly. He stood, wiped his mouth with the backside of his hand, and went to the window. Fifty-five stories below Morgan Edge, the lives of 6 million people went on in random synergy as the second-richest man in Metropolis observed.

"You don't understand, Allen," Edge wheezed.

I remained silent, but the truth was, I knew all too well. It was a feeling I had been experiencing with some regularity in the months since I had known Luthor.

"I'm…sorry," I offered feebly. Edge turned back to me with a disgusted scowl.

"It's fine," he said weakly. "You can go, Allen. Thank you for coming."

I looked at Edge uncomprehendingly, then over my shoulder at Lex, and then back at Edge. In the dark, I stood and slid out of the office.

I stopped and pushed the door shut, and sat in a nearby chair. For a long while, I just sat, twittling my thumbs. Then I realized the door was cracked open and I could hear Lex and Edge talking.

"What are you out to prove, Morgan?"

"The same as you, Lex."

"I find that unlikely," Lex said spitefully.

"Oh come on," Edge said agitatedly. "What's your interest in the boy?"

"More than you'll ever know."

"My interest is academic, Luthor. I want him to be a good student."

"Then," Luthor said, backing off. "You must be dumber than I ever gave you credit for."

After a baleful silence, Edge replied coldly. "I think you should go, Lex."

"Or what?" Luthor asked contemptuously, pushing Edge's buttons on purpose. "You'll hit me? You don't have the guts, Morgan."

"Don't push me, Luthor."

"No, Morgan," Lex interjected brusquely. "You've been in this city too long to realize what I can do. I could squash you like a bug."

"You need me, Luthor," Edge rebuffed snidely. "You know this. Everyone needs an enemy and you, my boy, are mine."

I inched my foot closer to the door, and nudged it open a bit more so I could see into the office. Angrily, Lex had thrown a chair aside with a raucous crash. Now, he towered over Edge's desk. I heard Edge gagging, and saw one of Lex's arms had left his side.

He was strangling Morgan Edge.

"Do you know how much I think of you, Morgan?" Lex growled harshly.

"This much!" Lex's voice spiked sharply and he held up his open hand with the thumb and forefinger held together. "You mean nothing to me, Morgan. You're a non-factor with no life and no future. I'm surprised you're still giving it a fighting chance."

_What?_

"Luh…Lex…" Edge muttered weakly.

"What?"

"If I don't matter to you…then what about….the boy…"

"Just like you said, Morgan. I'm out to prove a point, and you can't help me. Not anymore."

Lex released Morgan, and the CEO of Galaxy Broadcasting fell back in his chair, hacking and gasping for air. Lex brushed his hands clean and turned to the door. Hastily, I launched out of the chair and bolted down the hallway to the elevator. I pressed the button just as Lex came out of the office. I turned back to him with a smug grin and said, "So?"

"So what?" Lex said gruffly, adjusting his sleeves as he approached the elevator.

"What about…Edge?"

Lex said nothing.

And it was left at that, as the elevator came and Lex and I went our separate ways.


	7. Mystery

I returned to my dorm room to find Jesse sprawled on my bed watching television. He was wearing only athletic shorts and he was stroking his bare chest absentmindedly.

I'd only known him a few short days, but already I was picking up on some of his more endearing traits, such as his almost-constant stroking of his chest. He always held himself in high regard; always thought of himself as God's gift to women…or in his case, God's gift to men.

Days before, I had given Jesse a duplicate key to my room; hell, we both spent so much time in and out of each other's room, not bothering to leave any messages or anything of that nature, that it became something of commonplace to find ourselves spatially mismatched.

In any event, there was Jesse lying prostrate on my bed, in black athletic shorts, and stroking his own chest as if to keep himself occupied. I threw my bas down and sat in front of the computer, opening up my email server.

"Purveying the wildlife?"

"Funny," I said dryly, not bothering to look at him. "You need anything?"

"Nah," he said passively.

"How was swimming?" I asked.

"Nothing special. Saw some guys, did some laps. That's about it."

I was surprised to find, under the 'New Messages' folder, a message from Tim Drake, my once-and-future sparring partner in the war of Luthor. I turned back to Jesse.

"Hey…"

"What?"

"I, uh…just wanted to apologize. For earlier…that whole thing about Armstrong."

"It's alright, Allen. You did what you had to."

"Sure?"

"Yeah. Armstrong may be a dick—and not in the good sense—but he's got an opinion…just like everyone else. I don't like it, I can't change it, but I've learned to accept it. Anyway, to show there are no hard feelings, there's a present for you on my bed next door."

"Oh yeah?"

"Anna Kournikova…well, in poster form."

I stared at him confoundedly for a second. What an eccentric gift for someone. "You truly go out of your way, don't you?" I ribbed lightly.

"Hey, I do what I can," Jesse said with a chortle.

I went back to Tim's email. Intrigued by the premise of what he had to say, I opened the mail:

Allen. You never asked for this, but I'm giving it to you anyway. What you do with this is up to you, but here it is. Here are the answers to the Luthor question: Melissa Dugan, Gretchen Kelley, Sydney Happersen, Sasha Green, Dabny Donovan, Paul Westfield, Frank Berkowitz, Contessa Erica Alexandra del Portenza. Find these people, and you'll find what your 'hero' is all about.

-Tim"

I almost deleted the email, had it not been for my reporter's instinct kicking in at the last second. I wanted to take on Tim's churlish little challenge, if only just to say 'I told you so', so I opened a search engine and typed in the first name on the list: Melissa Dugan. If nothing else, I thought the research would lubricate the cogs of my brain. Chances were the names on the list were no-names, thought up by Tim on the spot to try and scare me away from Lex.

In any event, I spent the rest of the night researching the names (_thank you Lexis_). How Tim got them was not nearly as surprising as why he would send them to me.

In any case, I reminded myself that Tim Drake was Robin, the Teen Wonder. Superhero for all the hormone-addled girls (and maybe even the guys) in Gotham and beyond—providing of course that Robin acted outside the shadows like the Bat-Man that _NewsTime_ enjoyed talking about so much.. The superhero mentality required a great deal of altruism—something that just didn't jive with me. Nonetheless, I spent the night researching the list of names. It took me an hour to find anything substantive on Melissa Dugan alone.

A few years back, it seems, Ms. Dugan was once an employee of LexCorp and long-time lover of Luthor, in his more Casanovan days. But after a brief tenure in the company of Luthor, she left for the more lucrative S.T.A.R. Labs. According to the first site I was shown, the Metro Library's online microforms, Ms. Dugan was found face-down in her cereal bowl a few months after leaving LexCorp. Toxicity tests showed that neither the milk nor the actual cereal was tainted with any traceable amount of poison. There were no signs of breaking-and-entering in her apartment, and no physical signs of trauma on her body. _These cops dig too deep_, I thought. _Maybe she actually **did** drown. Typical insomniac, probably awake the whole night and finally gave up the ghost around 4 a.m.…casting caution to the wind, as it were, and residing in the drowning comfort of 2._

She had worked at LexCorp for two years, but left; a reason was not disclosed. The article didn't give specifics, but I suspected it was over something trivial like wager disputes. She then went to STAR Labs and worked there for approximately eighteen months. The day she was supposed to be promoted to department head, according to the article and STAR Labs' Head Professor Emil Hamilton, she didn't show up to work. The SCU found her drowned in her own Froot Loops the next morning. No signs of abuse, lacerations or striations around the neck or arms. Blood alcohol level of .08 (she was, apparently, quite the wine-drinker).

I didn't sleep at all that night. I kept playing the numbers over in my head. Presuming she was a social drinker—indulging a glass of wine every morning before leaving for work, there's no way it would integrate into her system before she got to work. Alcohol doesn't work that fast at the chemical level. Not unless you had the metabolism of a shrew.

So, question: _What soluble drug or poison did_?

I moved on to the next name on the list: Dr. Gretchen Kelley. I found all the information I needed on the Daily Planet archives website, written originally by a man named Clark Kent.

Apparently, a few years ago, Gretchen Kelley was Lex Luthor's personal doctor. She held that position for over twenty years. After Lex died, an illegitimate son—progeny of the original Luthor and this Dr. Kelley—came forth and saved Metropolis from social decay in the elder Luthor's absence.

Then, something called Project Cadmus started cloning people. _Cloning people_? According to the article—and its wordsmith Clark Kent—a mysterious plague began affecting the Cadmus clones soon after the news of Cadmus itself broke. Lex Luthor the second fell ill around this time from said plague, and it was Kelley who nursed him through it.

As I read on it became increasingly clear to me that the facts, oddly enough, spoke for themselves. There was a subtext creeping in that just screamed 'believe this article and he who wrote it.' Odd as it was, and as much as it went against my principles, I believed this Kent character. There was just…a level of believability in his words, his style. In any event, I went on.

As the cancer—or whatever the hell it was—which plagued the clones began to destroy Luthor's body, Kelley stood by his side, but privately sold him out to the media; aired his dirty laundry and flung herself into a big scandal. She was currently serving out the third of several charges regarding treason, extortion, blackmail and a host of other white-collar crimes.

_Cloning…interesting. Science straight out of Ray Bradbury. Or something like that._

So much for Dr. Kelley…but facts aside, the article **was** convincing. I moved on to the next name: Sydney Happersen. The search results were meager; the Planet files didn't hold so much information on this Happersen fellow. Chances were he probably suffocated in oatmeal or something. I pressed on.

It seemed that Happersen was Lex Luthor's personal assistant and a capable scientist in his own right. He was Luthor's right hand man since LexCorp's inception and was privy to the majority of LexCorp's so-called private projects—government and defense contracts, the alien in the hanger at Wright-Patterson Air Base, Area 51, and the nuclear weapon that France is hiding under the Eiffel Tower. All that crackpot conspiracy theory junk.

Happersen—as Luthor's second-in-command—oversaw the transition of LexCorp between the older Luthor and his "son". Luthor II fell ill suddenly, mysteriously, and was close to death when Happersen activated what Kent described as 'a series of emergency demolition charges designed to destroy Metropolis in the advent of it falling from Luthor's control'.

Happersen died soon after, apparently from massive coronary hemorrhaging. Article said that distant relatives claimed the body and declared a 'No Autopsy" order be filed with the Mayor's Office—then under Frank Berkowitz.

Berkowitz, as luck would have it, died soon after. Taken down during a public event by an assassin's bullet. There was not much else about the late mayor. A similar 'no autopsy' file had been made, and his death was left at that. Berkowitz left no heir; his next of kin moved to Canada and hadn't been seen since.

_Damn.

* * *

**Next: And the beat goes on...**_


	8. Discovery

For all you fans of the heyday of modern Superman comics. Modern meaning since 1986. Enjoy.

* * *

Jesse, suffering from the desire to always be the center of attention and bored with my lack of attention being put on him, left at 9:30 to—as he put it—"go cruising with the Velvet Mafia." I stayed behind and researched more names from Tim's list.

The next name was one Sasha Green. Green, the text said, was the personal trainer of Lex Luthor the second for approximately two years, until she was founddead, in one bloody hunk of woman,in one of the LexCorp subbasements. No autopsy, no toxicology exams. Nothing.

Dabney Donovan—next one up to bat—was one of the earliest geneticists working for Project Cadmus. His 'insane genius with genetics' (as Kent described it) led him to create an entire menagerie of monsters and creatures that plagued Metropolis and the Project alike. His illegal research also led to the creation of what the article described as the DNAliens. When the police discovered what Donovan was doing, he went underground using clones of himself to foil the police. Donovan was not seen until years after Happersen destroyed Metropolis, and even then it was unknown if it was the real Donovan.

So what did I have? One old lady who had a thing for Luthor, another mad scientist who hangs out in the sewers, and a disgruntled girlfriend who probably killed herself over not getting to wear his junior college ring. Each article I read on each of the names was convincing, yes. It led me to believe certain things about these people. But I had also done limited research on this Clark Kent. He had certain links to Superman, which were easily overlookable, but even better…he was married to Lois Lane—the one woman who was very vocal against Lex. Coupled with what Lex told me about her, she was ceaselessly eager-to-please: always out for the best story or the evening edition headline or the star of the football team. She had all the traits of a stalker, coupled with those of an out-of-touch patrician. She was, basically, a fish out of the societal water. She knew it, according to Lex, so she did everything she could to make herself feel better by vilifying those who disagreed with her—namely Lex. In another lifetime, Lex told me once, he had romanced Lois Lane to within an inch of marriage…but neither one of them was willing to give up their respective corners of the world.

_Ain't it always the way?_

I plodded along through the night, pouring over the remaining names and in the process finding less and less substantive information as the list went on.

Paul Westfield was once the Director at the head of the not-so-secret-anymore Project Cadmus. It seemed he was intent on creating a Superman clone to meet his own ends, but when the task of cloning Superman seemed more difficult than originally thought, Westfield combined his own DNA with that of the clone, in order to make it invulnerable. In effect, the Cadmus scientists genetically engineer a life form that would reproduce the powers, abilities and appearance of the Man of Steel. The "sample" was aged rapidly to adulthood, but it grew beyond the control of the Cadmus staff. The resultant tumult from the clone's escape set Cadmus back a bit, and allowed the clone to pursue its own life. The media dubbed him 'Superboy' on account of his adolescent appearance, and along with a cabal of pseudo-Supermen cavorting around after the real Superman died, he cleaned up Metropolis and defeated a Cyborg Superman.

And so I came to the last name on the list: Contessa Erica Alexandra del Portenza. _Jeez…imagine yelling that from your front porch._

She was the latest entry on the list of women Lex had claimed as his wife—number 8, if memory served. According to yet another article by the apparently prolific Clark Kent, after the 'Clone Luthor' was exposed and tried for crimes against humanity—whatever that meant—the Contessa stepped forth and took a controlling interest in LexCorp. Later, when Luthor resurfaced, apparently having served his time, he married the Contessa and sired a child. A girl, Lena Luthor, who was later kidnapped by an imperfect duplication of Superman, the aptly-named Bizarro. Lex retrieved the child with Superman's aid, and the Contessa, and whatever ties she had to the kidnapping, faded away.

That was where the article ended.

I printed out all the articles: Kelley, Happersen, and Westfield…all of them. In the morning, I decided, I would take them to Luthor and be perfectly straight with him.

Lex Luthor was the nation's greatest philanthropist. He was quite the public figure…and yet, these articles conveyed quite the opposite impression. Even the articles where he isn't mentioned explicitly seemed to imply dirty deeds on his behalf.

_What did Lex Luthor have to hide?_ Apparently, a lot. Or so this Kent had to say.

I made it my mission to find out what…and why.

I didn't sleep at all that night.

After what seemed like hours of restlessness, I finally decided to get up and work off the excess steam.

"Alright," I said gruffly, recriminating my own circadian cycle.

I tapped the mouse a bit, and the computer screen flicked to life. My eyes darted around the screen and finally came to rest on the small clock in the bottom right corner of the screen. 5 a.m.

"To hell with it," I grumbled. "I'll go. I'll go and…he'll see."

I wasted a bit more time on the computer, checking my email and stocks on the MSE ticker. LexCorp was up…by a marginal difference over its closest competitor: Galaxy Broadcasting. The _Daily Planet_, which had just gone public a month earlier, held a distant third.

Before I hit the road, I grabbed the small jewelry box Lex had given me off my nightstand and stuffed it into my jeans pocket.

I stopped at a 24 hour coffee shop near the GBS building to soothe my nerves. Earl Grey had a way of doing that.


	9. Integrity

It took me ten minutes to get to the LexTower from the long break I took at the coffee shop. The streets were oddly empty for 7 in the morning, a disturbing silence permeating the air and giving me a terrible sense of…inevitability.

I pushed my way through the revolving doors that led into the cavernous, marble-laden lobby of the LexCorp Tower. The receptionist's desk lay straight ahead of me, the masthead of the Luthor organization bolted to the wall high above the desk. The footfalls fell evenly on the bright marbled floor, echoing ominously across the void, bouncing off the walls of the atrium and back to me.

I was alone in the lobby. And it scared me.

I approached the elevator cautiously, half-expecting some ungodly creature to jump out when the doors opened and attack me. I hesitated only briefly but pressed the orange glowing 'up' button unsteadily.

The dark bronze colored doors slid open almost instantly, effortlessly, and I stepped in. I turned around and pressed the button marked 'OD'. There were two ways to get to Lex's office. The way that most boot-licking employees and the star-hungry press used was a miserly set of stairs behind rusty gray doors labeled 'fire escape'. The other way that one could access Lex's office was by a special bronze-bedecked express elevator which went from the top floor to the ground level in less than five seconds. Two ways to get to his office, both of them directly in front of him. Yeah…Lex was paranoid like that.

The elevator lurched forward and the inset speakers in the ceiling played Mozart's Jupiter 40 at a modest volume. I held the articles about Lex's…business associates tightly in my right hand, and found I was starting to shake nervously. _Can't think of this now, Allen. You've got a job to do and if you fuck it up you're dead._

The elevator lurched to a stop, and the lights flickered for a moment, and I heard gears grinding for a minute. Then the doors slid open, revealing a darkened lobby and further up, the double-glass doors that led into Lex's office.

As usual the glass doors leading into the office were unlocked, but I couldn't see inside the office; the lights were off. The lobby lights were on, however, bathing the elevator and a few feet inside Lex's office in a harsh blue tone.

What other light there was seeping into Lex's darkened office was from the massive fluorescent capital letter G across the roof of the Galaxy Broadcasting Building next door. I exhaled laboriously, nervously, and wipe the sweat from my brow. Fear washed over me like a raging current, and I found myself unable to turn away from the glimmering cityscape and the long black desk that lay before the windows.

I found my way to one of the small leather chairs before Lex's desk, sat, pulled out the folded articles from my back pocket and browsed through them momentarily.

Behind me, I heard a winded gust as one of the glass doors leading into the office slid open.

"Allen," the voice said, pleased and aghast at the same time. "What can I do for you?"

I slid the articles down through the opening at the top of the Oxford, secured them hastily in my waistband, and stood to see Lex standing confidently before me. He wore his trademark black suit, trousers, tie and shoes, and a dark green Oxford underneath. The tie was stapled neatly to his broad chest by a small gleaming, capital letter L tie-tack. On closer inspection, as he moved past me to his desk, I saw there were three diamonds in the tie-tack; one at the pinnacle, the other at the vertex of the two lines, and the last one at the end of the horizontal bar.

"Something to drink?" Lex asked as he sauntered to the liquor cabinet.

"Uh, no thanks," I said, politely waving my hand in dismissal. He turned away, poured the amber liquid into a waiting glass and returned to his desk.

"Suit yourself," Lex said, swirling the Scotch as he went. Finally, he reached his desk and sat in the large brown chair behind it.

"So," he said, exhaling, crossing his hands together and bringing them down dully on the desk. A large grin creased across his face. "What shall we talk about?"

"Well," I said, pulling the folded and ink-stained articles out of my back pocket. I unfolded them and glanced through them hastily, and then slid them across the table to Lex. He sipped his Scotch and set the empty glass aside. Pulling the crumpled articles to him, Lex narrowed his gaze into a scowl and read through the first article—Dr. Gretchen Kelley. I waited for a response.

Anything. Part of me expected him to cheerfully toss them aside. Another part expected that he would pull out a gun and shoot me on sight. And another part just wished I hadn't done this in the first place.

But I had to. I needed it. I needed to find out the truth. Partly to make Morgan Edge think I wasn't another brain-dead college youth, heedlessly cruising through life. Secondly, I needed to know if I could trust Luthor. There was a creeping subtext in Kent's articles of…truth—inexorable, inescapable and frightfully close to home.

He had gone through Kelley's sheet without so much as a raised eyebrow. He flipped the page to the next article: Melissa Dugan.

And then Sasha Green.

And then Dabny Donovan. With each page turn, Lex's face deepened in concentration. People talked about how the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing people that he didn't exist, and the saying was similar for Luthor. His greatest trick was convincing people that he had always been of a world of privilege. He was born the greater son of lesser parents, and bore the over-perfected and over-obsessed intellect and countenance of generations of exquisitely selective breeding and years of careful image-molding. His quality came from the gutter—from the years of making his own fortune after the death of his parents. His skin was pulled tightly over the square bones below; his eyes burned a dynamic green under the shade of sharp angled eyebrows. The dim lighting in his office glinted dully off his shorn head—the product of a singular genetic drawback in his entire body, that of male pattern baldness. The gears were turning.

I swallowed the collected saliva in my mouth, and pondered my next move.

Lex moved on to the next sheet of paper: The Contessa. His eyes narrowed almost immediately after turning the page and he exhaled laboriously. His mouth curled slowly downward in silent disapproval as he stared forebodingly down at the paper in his hands. _Like a lion about to rip into a gazelle_, I thought. I guessed that the Contessa evoked a feeling in Lex that Ivana evoked in Donald Trump. _Billionaires and their wives…they sure don't like having to share their empire, do they_?

Lex moved on to the next article: Paul Westfield. The Cadmus director who "created" Superboy in a manner of speaking.

The next article: Sydney Happersen. Lex's personal assistant for years upon years. The odd thing was…Lex didn't even read the Happersen article. He glanced at it for a scant second, flipped the page.

Finally, Lex came to the final article in the stack. Frank Berkowitz was once the mayor of Metropolis, but was taken out violently by an assassins' bullet. All the time I poured into researching the names Tim had sent me revealed nothing about Berkowitz's killer. The Ballistics report concluded that the bullet was fired from Metropolis S.C.U. standard-issue 9mm Glock.

"Where did you find these?" Lex asked motionlessly, his narrowed eyes still staring cryptically at papers before him.

"I, uh…research."

"Where?" Lex pondered grimly.

"Couple of places," I said hesitantly. "Library. The _Daily Planet_ online archives."

"I see."

Lex took another look at the spread articles on his desk.

"And who have you told this to?"

"No one."

A beat. Luthor's eyes rolled upward in their sockets to see me, and an eyebrow drew itself up, silently questioning me.

"No one," I reiterated.

"Jesse?" Luthor asked curtly.

"No," I said sternly, as if defending him.

Going back to the papers, Luthor said, "I guessed as much."

At the utterance of the word, I shrunk back in my seat, inevitable defeat washing over me like a raging flood. Luthor went on.

"These are **forgeries**."

"But—"

"The reproduction quality is low," he said disapprovingly, almost…insulted. "The ink is smudged and blurred."

Luthor shuffled them into a neat pile, set them aside, and came back to me. "So what was the idea, Allen?"

"What?" I asked, confounded. "How did you…?"

"Tell me, Allen. What's on your so-called mind? Come to see if the rumors are true, at long last?"

"No," I murmured puzzlingly. _Damn it, why did I say that?_

Lex stood and finished off the Scotch. His straight form hid the rising sun, and made me cringe in my seat. Almost.

"All the things you've been…told and have thought…concern me," Lex said in a very paternal tone. "All the times I've told you that I would never do anything to hurt you. All the times I've said that you mean more to me than the world will know. Those times…I counted on you have good faith in me; to take my word for it. But I also trusted you to make your own decisions—"

"I haven't made a choice one way or the other, Lex," I said, realizing my footing was slipping.

"I understand that, Allen," Lex said, clasping his hands behind his back, still standing tall. "Someone's playing us both for fools, Allen," Lex said sinisterly. "I will have the answers you seek. Sooner or later."

Lex approached me, sitting on the edge of his desk. He extended a broad, adamantine hand to me, and I stared at it precariously for a moment, unsure whether to take it or spit on it.

_All the things Tim gave me._

"_All the things I've given you…"_

"Take my hand…" Lex said steadily, his almost hypnotic voice completely focused on me. "Son…"

A chill overcame me, and I exhaled slowly. _Why is this happening to me?_

"You can trust me, Allen."

A tear streamed down my face. Luthor's hand seemed to waiver for a fleeting moment, and then righted itself. My head sunk, and I brought my own hand up to meet his.

"I…I trust you, Lex," I wheezed.

"I know, Allen….I know."

I left the office, walking slowly down the hall to the elevator in defeat. When the bronzen door slid open, I stepped in, pressed the ground-floor button, and waited for the doors to close. I looked up momentarily and saw Lex standing over his desk, with the phone cradled to his ear. He raised his head and stared at me menacingly. The nauseous feeling resurfaced in my stomach, and I expected him to just bolt out of his office and give me the pummeling of a lifetime. _God knows he has the physique to do it._

The doors slid shut, and the elevator descended to earth.

Luthor watched O'Neill go, and then went to his phone.

"Eve?"

"Yes, Mr. Luthor?"

Luthor drew in a quick breath as a dark smile crept across his adamantine face. "I want the office numbers and hours for the following places, all of them at the University of Metropolis."

"Alright, go ahead sir."

"The Dean's office, the Multi-cultural center, the Student Life Board, and the Bursar's office."

"Is that all, sir?"

"Yes, that's it."

"Deadline?"

Luthor checked his watch—2:30 p.m.—and went back to the phone. "No rush. As long as I have them by 9 a.m. tomorrow."

"Alright, sir. I'll have them before then."

"Excellent. And Eve?"

"Yes, Mr. Luthor?"

"Find Franklin Stern. Ask himwhat he's willing to pay for the_Planet_."


	10. Machination

When I got back to my dorm room, I called Tim Drake's cell phone.

"What is it?" He answered gruffly, annoyed.

"Tim, I need your help. Something's wrong."

"This isn't exactly a good time," He rasped angrily into the receiver.

"Well, I'm sorry I interrupted you in the middle of class or whatever, but this is big."

"What could it possibly be?"

"I took those articles to Luthor this morning."

A pause.

"Tim?"

"You did what?" His voice sounded overly conscious; as if I had made a potentially fatal error.

"I couldn't wait anymore. Look, I—"

"Do you realize what you've done?"

"I don't get it. He just shrugged them off as forgeries or planted attempts to make him look bad."

"That's what he does," Tim said insistently.

"Granted, but—"

"Allen, I'd love to come to Metroppolis, but I'm sort of..unable to. I'm in San Francisco for the weekend, and—"

"Tim."

"What?"

"Why did you send me that list of names? Why are you helping me? After the way I treated you."

"It's…what friends do for each other."

I smiled, unseen. "Thank you Tim."

"Don't mention it."

I received a voice-mail on my cellular from Jesse, saying that he had gone to Blüdhaven and would be back later tonight.

I had the timing pretty good; I could stop by the market for a bite to eat, and then head back to campus. By the time I would return, Jesse would already be back in town. I made one course correction-stopping by a specialty shop and picked up a box of chocolates for Jesse. _Why? My unending quest to be loved. Probably._ Cost wasn't too bad, and the chocolates were actually pretty good as I sampled a few off the bottom level. _Guh…coconut. _

I opened my door, tossed the box of chocolates on the bed, and went to my PC.

As I waited for the computer to power up, I thumbed through a copy of _Newstime_. Cover story: the selling of the Daily Planet.

The phone rang. Still reading the cover story, I reached across the desk to grab the phone, and pressed the talk button.

"Hello?" It was Jesse.

"Hey Jess," I said. "Nice to hear your voice. I brought you a little...reconciliatory snack. Too bad you can't have any yet." I tossed aside Newstime and examined the candies.

_Curious._

"Hmm," he murmured across the line.

"What is it?" I asked as I went to the micro-fridge and pulled out a Sprite.

"Big headlines today."

"Oh yeah. Lex bought out the _Daily Planet_."

"Well, yeah," Jesse said condescendingly. "Don't think they're in the mood to talk about it either."

"Probably not," I said dubiously. "So you're coming back later tonight?"

"No. Actually, something's come up, and I've gotta hang out here a little longer." He sounded…tense.

"Fair enough," I said with a chuckle. "You need anything?"

"Morgan Edge…in a nice little package."

"And I thought only the girls fell for him."

"It's the stubble," Jesse said lewdly. "Works wonders."

"Especially on the ladies, I'd say. See you later."

"Yup."

I opened up my email. No new messages. Lex hadn't called. Ever. And Tim…well…

_San Francisco_ _? What the hell is in San Francisco ?_

The shrill metallic ring of the phone distracted my attention.

"Hello?"

"Allen. It's Hope. Listen; don't say anything, this phone call has to be invisible."

"Okay," I said plainly.

"Listen, I've got...something here that you may or may not be interested in."

After a pause, I spoke, fearing the worst. "What is it?" I asked grimly, my voice slipping.

"It's Jesse."

"You wanted to see me, Chief?"

"Yeah," Perry White said laboriously. He extended a hand towards the seat in front of his own cluttered desk, and Clark Kent sat.

"Is this about the…"

"Yeah. It is, Clark ."

"I see," Kent said nervously. "So…what do you want me to do?"

"I want you to get your hide down to LexCorp. See if you can get Luthor's two cents on this damned thing."

"Check," Kent said, and stood. White stopped him short of leaving the office.

" Kent ."

"Yes, sir?"

"If we do get shut down…"

"Chief?"

"Nothing."

Kent left White's office. And then it came. Hypersonics; a long, sustained shrieking drone, piercing Kent 's hyper-sensitive alien auditory system. It was like the emergency broadcast system being directly broadcast into his brain. The only difference was that every dog inside ten miles could hear it, plus Superman. Carried over the wavelengths…the voice of Lex Luthor.

"This is Lex Luthor. There is only one thing with less than four legs that can hear this, and that's you Superman."

Kent rushed through the newsroom, down the hall to an empty janitor's closet.

"I won't waste too much of your time, but if you're going to look for me, you're wasting your time."

Kent ducked inside and pulled off his suit, revealing the Superman uniform underneath. He looked up at the ceiling and lifted off the ground, heading out of the building through the heating duct. Luthor's voice continued.

"I'm not in Metropolis, and in the time it takes you to find me, you could spend finding Lois Lane."

_ What?_, Superman thought grimly. 

"That's right," Luthor's tinny voice continued. "She's missing. And if you don't find her, the barrel of a gun will."

* * *

Next: The Runaround!, Superman thought grimly.Next: The Runaround! 


	11. Author's Note

Author's Note: 

apologies for the strange format in chapter 10. I don't know if it was the server o something wacky on my PC, but there should be a line of demarcation after Hope tells Allen that Jesse is at the LexTower, and the point where Clark Kent walks into Perry's office.

sorry for any mix-up

LL13


	12. The Runaround

I left for the Lex Tower immediately. That's where Hope said she would be, and with her, Jesse.

_"What's he doing there?"_

_"The police said they found him huddled up in front of the GBS building. Said he was a damn mess."_

_"So they…called you?" I asked in a bit of confusion._

_"He had I.D. on him. Emergency contact listed was Mr. L. I don't know why, but…that's what he did."_

_"And Lex is home for the day?"_

_"He's gone to Massachusetts for the weekend."_

_"Alright, I'll be there shortly."_

_"Fine. My office is on the 73rd floor, suite 5."_

When Hope disconnected and I got on my way downtown, I got a chance to sit down and think about…the day. Lex buying out the _Planet_. Tim and his…concern for me. And it came to me.

All this time, I've had these friends. These people who impact my life in hundreds of ways. And I never realized it. I wasn't going to sacrifice in Jesse what I spent damn good time trying to build with Lex.

_But he's not your best friend, Allen. You have to know that._

_Bullshit._

_Is it? Does Lex really have an interest in you?_

_He saved me._

_Did he?

* * *

_

In the darkened auspices of his private car—a 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III, Lex Luthor sat lazily in the leather-upholstered seat. He was on his way to Roxbury, Massachusetts to raise funds for the Daily Planet venture, and wanted everything to go smoothly. In order to get sufficient capital from an outside source—one other than his own pocketbook—say, that of O'Neill's untimely intervention had thrown a small wrench in the machine, but it could be easily remedied—given time. Time, however, Luthor didn't have. Things were in motion now that could not be slowed without certain things…coming to light. He'd been poring over the articles O'Neill had given him hours ago, and had come to three conclusions.

One. That Allen found these people on his own time, of his own free will, and was genuinely curious as to what connection they had to Luthor himself. If that was the case, then it had to be inferred that Allen's interest came from an outside source. Morgan Edge and his professorship at the University. He must have assigned something with Luthor's name on it; fueling the fire and making Allen's brain actually function.

Two. That someone supplied the names to Allen. Simple enough. There were two choices then: Tim Drake, the ward of Bruce Wayne, who usually accompanied Wayne on the golf course. Or Superman.

Three. That someone close to Luthor supplied the names. Unlikely, but possible.

Luthor leaned forward and spoke to his driver—Mercy Graves. He'd left Hope back in Metropolis.

_"Keep an eye on O'Neill."_

_"Yes, Mr. L."_

Luthor tapped Mercy's shoulder lightly. "Mercy. How close are we to Roxbury?"

"Twenty miles."

"Fine," Luthor said dismissively, and leaned back. He pulled his cellular phone from the inside pocket of his suit, and pressed the autodial for his secretary's desk.

"Eve."

"Yes, Mr. Luthor?" Teschmacher's voice sounded worried—overtly ethereal, for no apparent reason.

"Call Hope. Find him."

* * *

The elevator lurched upwards with sickening rapidity. My stomach rose from within the darkness of my chest cavity, and my ears popped as the altitude changed. Finally, the elevator dinged silently, and the doors slid open, releasing me onto the 73rd floor. The hall was completely darkened, except for a single beam of light emanating from one of the offices at the end of the hall. I stepped out of the elevator unsteadily, and began the slow walk down to the office—which I could only assume was Hope's.

I reached the office, knocked faintly on the open door.

"Hello?"

No answer. I peeked my head around and looked across the threshold. Two desks sat opposite each other in the middle of the room—one immaculate, the other cluttered.

"Hello?" I repeated. The office was empty.

The phone rang; a shrill metallic ringing cut through the thick silence. Hesitantly, I regarded the sleek black machine on the corner of the clean desk. It rang again, and I lowered a shaky hand to pick up the receiver.

"H-hello?" I said disjointedly.

"Allen?"

"Uh, yes, this is he."

"This is Eve Teschmacher at Mr. Luthor's office. While he's out for the weekend, he asked me to get ahold of you. I had called this line hoping to speak to Hope, but since you're here its all the better."

"Oh…well, I guess I'm lucky like that," I said, my confidence creeping back.

"Indeed," Teschmacher said. "Anyway, Mr. Luthor wanted me to inform you of Mr. Wright's situation."

"Oh?"

"Yes. He's contacted the Daily Planet and requested the resignation of Dirk Armstrong."

Silence. _Odd_, I thought. _Very odd._

"Allen?"

"Yes. Sorry, Miss Teschmacher. My mind drifted off for a second."

"Fair enough," she replied genially.

"Thank you for the news though, Miss Teschmacher. I'll, uh, be sure to pass that on."

"Happy to help, Allen. Goodbye."

"Yeah," I said perplexedly, as she disconnected.

I lowered the receiver from my ear, and just stared at it for a few minutes. The dial tone started up o the other end, and I set it back down on the receiver. I turned and walked out of the office, glancing in both directions before heading back to the elevators.

_Luthor calling for Armstrong's resignation. __Teschmacher wanting to "talk to Hope" and my convenience in being in the office at that time. It just raised too many questions. I'll go to Luthor's office_, I thought to myself. _Maybe that's were Hope is._

The elevator stopped on the 120th floor—the top floor, and location of Luthor's office. I stepped out into a miserly, cramped foyer lit by shoddy sodium-filament lights. Ahead of me were the doors to Luthor's office. It was completely dark inside the office. Chances were, Hope and Jesse probably weren't in there. To my right was a set of earth-toned utility doors that led up to the roof. I turned to the utility door, but was stopped short by the voice of Luthor.

"There's only one thing with less than four legs that can hear this, and that's you Superman."

"What the hell?" I said aloud, turning back to Luthor's office. The voice was faint, but I was sure it was coming from Luthor's office. I pushed one of the heavy glass doors open and walked into the darkened office. Luthor's voice continued: "…in the time it takes you to find me, you could find Lois Lane."

The sound got louder as I approached the desk. I walked behind the sprawling wooden seat of power, and tracked the voice down to the floor. In the darkness, my hands fumbled around, pulling out Luthor's wheeled-chair. Finally, I came upon it. A small grey box—a tape recorder—nestled tightly against the inside of Lex's desk. Luthor's voice—a recording, I had thus deduced—stopped.

I removed the recorder from its spot on the floor, and picked it up, curiously regarding it.

"Allen."

I shot around to the window—aghast—and saw Superman hovering just beyond the glass.

"Superman," I said cryptically.

The Man of Steel, in all his theatrical glory, hovered almost motionless from the sky…like some sort of new age messiah.

I was amazed and silent.

"How…did you know my name?" I asked perplexedly.

"Super-hearing," the Man of Steel said. "Plus…I believe the last time we met was in this very office."

"Yeah," I replied sheepishly. "But…what are you…?"

"I get that a lot," Superman said with a reserved smile. "Now, if you please, go to Luthor's chair, and lift the right-side armrest. There is a button underneath that will open the windows and let me in."

I looked at the chair, then back at Superman. "How did you…?"

"If you please, Allen." He sounded stern…but congenial. Strange. I lifted the armrest like he said, found a single red button, and pressed it. The two massive panes of glass gave a brief exhale of air—like a pneumatic engine—lurched forward a few inches, then separated from each other, guided by rollers. Superman lowered himself to the floor, his arms still crossed.

"I don't get it." I asked, genuinely confounded.

"Folks don't quite know how to react when I show up."

Amazing, I thought. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he was raised in a barn.

After a brief silence, Superman spoke up. "What can I do for you, Allen?"

"I was actually wondering why you're here," I asked. Superman's focus shifted from my eyes, to the grey tape recorder, which I held loosely in my hand.

"I was tracking that, Allen."

"The tape recorder?"

"Yes. A Signal coming from it, anyway. A hypersonic one—intended for my ears, and those of every dog in the city."

"Hypersonics," I said quizzically. "But then…how did I hear it?"

"The signal was the only thing hypersonic about it. Luthor's voice remained at the frequency it's always been, but amplified in a certain way, so as to be carried on a higher frequency."

"That still doesn't help me," I said, half-amused.

"Well, unless you're some kind of meta-human, Luthor probably intended for you to hear his voice, just as much as he did me."

"Fair enough," I said, allowing the matter to pass over my head."

"So what's the problem, Allen?" Superman pulled Lex's chair close to him, and sat in it. I stared puzzlingly for a brief moment, and then carried on.

"Well, I think we happened to run into each other by happenstance tonight, Superman."

The Man of Steel nodded curtly.

"But, while we're here. I wanted to talk about…"

"Luthor," Superman said darkly.

"Yes."

"All right. What about him?"

"It's weird Superman. One of my friends—"

"Jesse…"

"—Jesse. He's…missing."

"You don't know where he is?"

"No," I wheezed. "And I'm scared, Superman." A single bead of sweat streamed won my forehead. I didn't know if it was from talking with such a presence as Superman, or my fears that Jesse was…

Keep those emotions in check, Alley. Let me take over, and then you'll be like Sara. And who wants that?

"I'm scared that someone has Jesse and I don't know what they're doing to him," I said weakly, my voice cracking and waning, tears welling up.

"Give me five minutes, Allen. I can search the building to see if your friend is here." Superman stood, and made for the window.

"What about the lead?" I asked, turning back to the Man of Steel.

Turning to me slowly, Superman spoke softly. "Luthor told you about the lead, then?" I nodded slowly in response. "Don't worry," Superman said assuringly. "There's more than one way to skin a cat."

I raised a curious eyebrow as Superman lifted into the sky, heading towards the roof of the Tower.

_My father saved me. Me…his only son. Who left…an entire legacy in his wake. It haunts me. I was made responsible to people I never would have met had my life not been changed. And the responsibility of a son…is not to repeat the sins of the father. My childhood was tied to the safety of the rest of the world…the rest of **my** world. _

_I could never really escape. But I could create a place—or one could be created, with the intent to save us all. My father…saved me and me alone. Because time ran out. Because it never dawned on this mind that a life's twilight could occur in the firing of a synapse. When he understood that there would be no denouement, he tried everything to salvage the remnants. Believing that my life was more important, and that the inevitable was…impossible. But…I sometimes wonder if it was. And I wonder. When I left, what did he see? His only son facing the world? Or his own failures?_

"He's not here, Allen," Superman said. He had done an overview of the building, and apparently been unable to locate Jesse.

"Are you sure?"

"Pretty certain."

"How were you able to see through the lead?"

"Lead's an expensive little hobby. Even given his riches, Luthor could never afford to cover the **whole** building with it. I found the open spots."

"So…you…what?"

"Went to the basement and looked…up," Superman said with a slight grin.

"Heh. I shouldn't be amused, but….wow."

"It's alright. Listen, Allen. I've got some rounds to make. You're welcome to come with me."

"No," I said humbly. "I don't want to be a nuisance."

"It's no problem. I can drop you at the University, or the Planet, or wherever you like."

"I'll be alright, Superman," I said with a reserved smile. "I know my way home."

* * *

**Next: The Power to End It! (?)

* * *

Author's Note: **The italicised inner monologue of Allen (or is it Superman?...you be the judge:) ) is from the recent issue of Superman, numbered 213, scribed by Brian Azzarello. It has been edited for content.

* * *


	13. Out

"I hear all the stories, you know. It's like no one believes he's a nice guy. But I do. I've seen it."

"I know," Superman replied silently. "But I look for the good in people. It's who I am. I believe that there is a good man inside Luthor. Somewhere."

"Yeah," I replied quietly.

"Allen," Superman said reservedly. "I don't judge anyone. I just…try to help."

_Superman hits another one out of the park. Maybe…just maybe…he's not so bad. Maybe…Lex didn't like the Man of Steel because of his straightforwardness._ Superman was honest—that much was true, and I had only known the man for mere minutes—and Lex…_Lex liked his secrets._

"That's admirable," I said. "But…"

"But?"

"You're a hero, Superman. You…help people. I thought you could help me. At least…I hope you can."

"I hope so too," Superman said, a proud, yet modest smile creasing across his face. His spit-curl waved minimally in the faint afternoon wind. "So what's the trouble?"

"They say you have all these powers. Freeze breath, x-ray vision….the list goes on," I said plainly, a tone of sickness and fatigue creeping into my voice. "Can you…I dunno, this is gonna sound stupid."

A pause. A part of me felt an emptiness in calling him 'Superman'. Like…we were on this more-than personal level, and it felt so **im**personal.

"Can you….read my mind?"

"Yes," he said flatly. I was almost let down by the robotic distance in Superman's voice. "In a way, if that's what you're getting at. I can see your brain activity. X-ray and microscopic vision."

I looked up to Superman narrowly and pursed my lips. His brow furled and his eyes narrowed. His jaw clenched as he drew in a breath.

After a pause, he spoke again. "Synapses are firing pretty rapidly, Allen. There's a lot on your mind."

"Yeah…yeah there is."

"Care to share?"

"Superman, do you…have like, I dunno. A real identity or something."

"Why don't you call me Kal for the time being, okay?"

"Okay," I said heavily. Already, I could feel my respiration slowing, some inexorable darkness inside me filling me with doubt and disgust. "Have you ever had something you've ever felt you had to conceal from the world?"

"Yes," Superman said. "Many things."

"Then you know how difficult it can be to keep secrets. Things that could destroy a man. Hold them in long enough and they start to destroy you…"

Superman looked past me; at the glimmering city beyond the opened windows of Lex's office. He turned back, the wind rushing through his hair and sweeping his cape around the angular sharpness of his form.

He looked back at me with a serious look. "Tell me, Allen. Did he ever give you anything like a ring or a sort of rock? Anything of that nature?"

"Yes," I said. "There was a ring…in a little, heavy, black box. I held on to it for…I don't know how long. A week? Maybe more."

"Did you ever open it?" Superman asked.

"No. He told me not to. Why?"

"The rock embedded into the ring is called Kryptonite. It's the…irradiated remains of my birth world, Krypton."

"What does that have to do with Luthor?"

"Kryptonite is highly radioactive," Superman said wearily. "It's also easily synthesized, though less potent in that case. Luthor synthesized some Kryptonite once and had it set into a ring."

"You sound surprised."

"I am. Luthor wore that ring…years ago, but it was…reclaimed recently."

"Lex wore a Kryptonite ring?" I repeated darkly.

"For about a year before it finally got to him. He lost his right hand to the radiation."

"Cancer?" I asked; the distant memory of Lex Luthor II creeping into my mind.

"Yes," Superman said, his brow furling in confusion. "I…thought you knew."

"No," I said, confounded. "Lex…never told me much of anything about his past. Except for some names."

"What names?"

"I don't remember all of them. Gretchen Kelley, Sydney Happersen, Dabney Donovan. And even then, those names didn't come from Luthor."

"Where **did** they come from?" Superman asked tersely.

"A…friend of mine. Tim Drake."

"I see," the Man of Steel said distantly.

"I don't get it. Why would Luthor hide this from me? I mean….was it really that important?"

After a lengthy pause, Superman sighed and started in.

"Legacy," he said quietly.

"What?"

"After Luthor lost his hand, he grew paranoid, unpredictable. Medical records showed serious chemical imbalances in the man's brain. He developed an acute case of psychosis…bipolar disorder, almost, until he finally ended it and engineered his return in a clone body—himself at a younger age. Soon after that, he finally snapped…and destroyed this city."

A pause. I slid my hands into my pockets and glanced dubiously at Superman, who stared longingly out at the city.

"The city I love," Superman whispered quietly.

"My God," I whispered hatefully, silently recriminating myself for not seeing it earlier. "He did all those things….every single one."

Slouching slightly, Superman bowed his head and stared at me balefully. "Then you know what you have to do."

"If…if you're asking me to go to the press with this…"

"It wouldn't matter now. I'm asking you to do what you think is right," Superman said intently. I sensed a bit of disappointment in his voice that I was reluctant to out Lex. "You're a human being and you have opinions. You're an educated human being. You have an interest in the outcome of events. Don't try to hide that, and don't let anyone try to destroy it. Be honest about what you think. Be honest about your desires and tell people who you are."

"You know I can't do this," I said wearily, almost tearfully. "Lex is like a father to me."

"I understand," Superman said. "But just so we're clear…he did all those things. He destroyed this city. He created monsters and set them loose on the world, and on me. He's destroyed lives with a flick of his wrist. All because he **could**."

Silence.

"Understood," I muttered.

Superman stared at me for a moment. "It isn't right, Allen. No one deserves to be treated like that. Where I come from, we believe in equal protection and justice. Luthor's outgunned them both, for too long now. No one deserves to be a pawn…no one has the right to be a lord."

Superman turned back and stared at me balefully. Behind him, the sun fell slowly into its afternoon inclination. Long narrow shadows fell across the city as the late autumn night bore closer.

"You have the power to end this, Allen."

In the distance, sirens blared. Superman glanced away and then back at me.

"Do as you will."

And the Man of Steel lifted into the night.

* * *

_**Next: **__**Fall in place!**_


	14. Truth

Lex Luthor's private car—a 1937 Rolls Royce Phantom III—rolled to a stop in the middle of the graveled front parking lot of the Roxbury Hills Country Club. Inside, Luthor scrawled way hastily at paper after paper. The job was never done, he thought to himself. He gave his signature to a final one, set them on the empty seat next to him, and called his driver—Mercy Graves III.

"Update, Mercy."

"It's coming up, Lex," she responded. A small panel in front of Luthor slid out and up, and a small television screen emerged from the cabinet, running on pneumatic pistons. The screen flickered intermittently, and then brought up an image of Luthor's own office. Luthor leaned forward, bringing his arms to rest on his knees, and steepling his fingers; he watched the screen intently, scrutinizing every movement of the figures displayed.

_Allen_, Luthor thought. _And…Superman. In my chair._

"Can we get audio on this?" Luthor asked.

"Remotes are hazy. You sure you could get something from it?"

"Go ahead," Luthor said. A second later, the tenebrous voice of Superman cut in.

"—it's who I am. I believe that there is a good man inside Luthor. Somewhere."

_He really thinks so, doesn't he?_

O'Neill spoke, after a silence which Luthor chalked up to audio interference: "Have you ever had something you've ever felt you had to conceal from the world?"

"Yes," Superman said. "Many things."

O'Neill, in contrast to the cosmic Big Brother, looked so small. Disheveled. Like something was eating him alive, quite literally from the inside out. "Then you know how difficult it can be to keep secrets. Things that could destroy a man. Hold them in long enough and they start to destroy you…"

_He knows_, Luthor thought hatefully. _He's figured it out, and he's going to—_

The audio cut out. Luthor's eyes narrowed as he analyzed the small viewscreen. "Mercy," he said darkly. "What happened?"

"If I were a betting man—"

"Shut it, Mercy. See if you can get only audio from there. I've got work to do."

"Yes sir," Mercy replied halfheartedly.

Luthor slid the TV back into the casing, lowered the cover, and pushed the back door of the Rolls Royce open. Outside stood a strong, tall man. Short cut brown hair rounded his head almost perfectly, and barely noticeable dark bags drooped under his deep eyes. A corner of his mouth was drawn upward as he crossed his arms defiantly over his chest and smiled at Luthor, who stared up at him disdainfully.

"Welcome to Roxbury country club, Lex," Maxwell Lord said congenially.

"Max," Luthor said, stepping out of the car and meeting Lord's handshake. "How are things? I trust the old business is as profitable as ever?"

"Well, we're making headway, Lex. Walk with me."

_A Kryptonite Ring_, I thought.

Superman had long since left my company; he had fires to put out, kittens to save, and soup cans to open for hapless old ladies. I was alone in Lex's darkened office. And…I was kind of scared.

_Why didn't he tell me? Was I somehow undeserving?_ There were two real questions at hand. One_, why did Lex give me this Kryptonite ring. Second, given his—as Superman put it—past run-ins with kryptonite, why would he still carry it around?_

_Third question: why didn't he tell me about the…cancer? Radiation. Whatever._ I mean, I wasn't exactly Lex's golfing buddy, but I knew my fair share of his life. He sort of made it a point for me to.

To establish familiarity? _I don't know. Maybe. A stupid High School kid and a powerful billionaire aren't exactly made for each other._ But what was the motive? _Why hide this kind of thing from me? Why not tell me about a life-changing event?_

_He didn't car about you._

_He didn't love you._

_Bullshit._

That was my problem._ Always looking for some lovin' and it always works against me. Always. _DammitAlways looking for acceptance, always looking for…friends.

_He couldn't take the risk you knowing too much about him, in the unlikely yet possible event that you went snooping on your own._

Possibly.

_And you couldn't run the risk of knowing too much, for whatever reason you want to shill out._

_"You have the power to end this, Allen." _Superman's words still echoed in my head. Did I really have the power to end this? So what—_I go to Luthor, go all noble and say 'I know, Lex.' And then he says something imposing like 'of course you knew. I wanted you to know. It's all part of my plan.'_

_That's Tim Drake talking._

Was it?

Luthor sat lazily in the backseat of the Rolls Royce. He stared intently out the side window, watching the thoroughly un-scenic scenery of New Jersey pass him by.

"Location," he asked heavily.

"20 miles," Mercy responded. "We'll be in Metropolis inside 10 minutes."

"Speed. I intend to catch Allen before things go south."

Silence. Mercy looked in the rearview mirror, at Luthor's reflection. He was staring pensively out the window, one arm rested on the door armrest, supporting his head.

"How did Lord take it?"

"Oh he's in. With Wayne and Thornton, we're up to 10 million. Start-up operations alone."

"That sounds…good."

"It's not enough," Luthor said distantly. HeturnedtoMercy, seated in the driver's seat ahead of him. "Where **is** Allen?"

_"After Luthor lost his hand, he grew paranoid, unpredictable. Medical records showed serious chemical imbalances in the man's brain."_

Superman. I guessed I should have thanked the Man of Steel for confirming what, until then, had only been conjecture tossed on me by Tim Drake. Tim was…overzealous. Superman, though. He told the truth. Or seemed to, anyway.

"I'm gonna have to talk to Luthor about this," I said aloud. I stood from the lounge chair in front of Lex's desk, and reached in my pocket. Fumbling around for a moment, I finally found it, and removed it. The little black box, lined with lead—according to Superman—that contained Lex's old failsafe, the Kryptonite ring.

I held the box in my hand for a moment, before lowering my arms slowly, and placing it on Lex's desk. _He'll find it when he gets back. Whenever the hell that'll be._

Chemical imbalance. Made him sound insane, for the love of God. _Aren't we all a little imbalanced here and there?_

_You're missing the point, Allen._

_Maybe so. Lex might have a screw or two loose, but he's not insane. Not in that Freud way, anyway._

My thoughts were interrupted by the shrill ringing of Lex's desk phone. I stared at it for a long while before grasping the receiver and lifting. I held it in limbo for a moment, considering my options.

_Lex'll never know you answered his phone._

_So noted._

"Hello?" I said unsteadily.

Silence.

"Hello?" I repeated. A small murmur creeped through the receiver, from the other end of the line.

"allllennn…."

"What? Who is this?"

"alllleennnnn….help meee….." The voice was frightfully…inexplicably weak. Whoever it was, they sounded like they had just woken up, or were near death.

"Who is this?" I asked pressingly, casting aside my better judgment for the moment.

"jjessseee…."

"Jesse?" I said bluntly, my stomach rising in my chest. In my conversation with Superman, I had forgotten the reason why I was in the LexTower to begin with. Jesse had gone missing, and I wanted to find him. "Jesse where are you?"

"sub….bassssemennnnnt…."

"The sub-basement? Of the LexTower?"

Silence. The line went silent, and a dial tone started soon after. I dropped the phone and ran for the elevators.

"He's leaving the office, Lex."

"He'll be heading for the sub-basement. Can we make it in time?"

"Yes," Mercy saidgrimly, her teeth clenched, a smile creeping across her face in reserved anticipation.


	15. Prerogative

Author's Note: A little longer chapter this time around. Hopefully, it'll be worth it;).

* * *

The elevators dinged open. 

In the laboratory down the hall from the elevators, Hope Taya heard the distinctive ding of the elevators. She stopped what she was doing, and looked back at the open door. Just as Luthor had directed, the door was open. It was an invitation for O'Neill to come in.

Rows of bright halogen lights overhead gave the lab ample lighting, but cluttered machinery in the lab itself still masked the light—exuded mystery. Uncertainty.

Hope straightened her ruffled uniform and slid back against the inside wall, just out of sight of someone entering the lab.

* * *

The doors opened too slowly. I pushed them open and bolted down the hall. The first open door, on my right. _Yeah, that must be it._ White halogen light flooded from inside, lighting a small cube of space in the otherwise darkened, labyrinthine hallway. _Slow down, Allen. This isn't the home field. Deep breath. Okay. Walk._ I stopped for a moment, tapped my fingers nervously against my pants leg, and rounded the corner.

And there he was.

In a huddled mass on the cold concrete floor in front of me. Jesse. _Jesus, he looks terrible_. His shirt was torn, mutilated…bloody. _Someone beat the hell out of him._ He lay on his side, one arm tucked under his beaten corpus, the other sprawled outwards on the floor; the lifeless fingers—each one bent at unnatural angles, as if they'd been broken individually—lay motionless on the cold floor, surrounded by small droplets of blood. _Someone really beat the hell out of him.  
_

I knelt at Jesse's side, but was apprehensive to touch him or try moving him. If he had a broken rib, moving him could puncture a lung and kill him in a matter of minutes.

_The next best thing._ "Jesse," I said quietly, like a mother trying to rouse a kid for school in the morning. "Jess…can you hear me?"

He groaned softly, painfully. His eyes, already shut, squinted more as I repeated his name. Dried blood encircled his mouth and dotted his face.

"Can you hear me, Jesse?"

"No…." he muttered weakly.

"It's me, Jess….It's Allen."

"Other…side…"

"Who did this to you, Jesse?"

"Everything…looks different…"

"What, Jesse? What looks different?"

"On…the other…side…"

"He can't hear you, Allen."

I pivoted on my knee to see Hope standing behind me. "Hope. What happened to him?"

"Doctor's orders," she said cryptically, her face emotionless.

"Orders?" I asked bluntly. "Whose."

Silence. She was probably sworn to silence.

"**Answer** **me!**"

"He brought it upon himself," Hope said. _Goddamn it, she's not helping me. My friend is injured, probably dead by now, and Hope's up here feeding me riddles._

"Brought what?"

More silence. And in watching the grim expressionless countenance of Hope Taya…it came to me.

"**Luthor** did this. He did it….all because Jesse was…"

A smile creeping across her face, Hope waved her hand in encouragement. "Go on."

"Because he was gay," I said slowly, remorsefully. Like I should have _fucking_ seen it coming. Why the hell didn't I?  
"He was dangerous, Allen," Hope said grimly.

"Don't patronize me," I said, standing. "Superman was right."

"Wrong," a voice from beyond Hope said. "Superman is wrong, and so is your friend."

_Lex_.

"Was it really that much of an issue, Lex? That you had to kidnap him and beat the shit out of him?"

"You couldn't understand," Luthor said narrowly. "He was a threat."

"To who!" I blurted incredulously. "What, were you afraid he was gonna make untoward advances on you? Or was it jealousy, maybe some preconceived notion that you wanted to be a noble crusader?"

"**Shut up!**" Luthor barked. "You don't understand because you haven't got the ability to."

Silence. I stood, and slid my hands sheepishly into my pockets. He had never yelled at me before. It was…an interesting turn of events.

"Lex," I said pleadingly. "I want to believe that there's something to this than what it looks like. Right now, it's just…a hate crime." I felt a tear well up in my eye socket. "Just…tell me there's more to it than you wanting to string him up on a fencepost."

Luthor regarded me coldly for a moment, then started pacing. He walked in a broad circle around me, and as he spoke, he inspected the cluttered machinery which populated the laboratory.

"My life is motivated by control, Allen," Lex said as he walked. He held one hand in a tight up-drawn fist at his waist, the other nestled in his pocket. He looked above him, at the high ceiling of the laboratory. "Control over my empire, control over my life—"

"Control over other people," I interjected. Luthor stopped and narrowed his gaze at me for a moment.

"I've spoken to Superman, Lex. He…verified those names."

Luthor disregarded it and started pacing again, inspecting his fingernails idly as he went. "That's unfortunate," he said after a measure pause.

"Unfortunate that I know the truth?"

"Unfortunate that you would blindly accept the failing ideology of a cringing alien man-god."

"He **was** telling the truth," I insisted. My fists coiled up tightly at my sides.

"Was he?" Luthor asked, raising a questioning eyebrow and regarding me for a moment. "Are any of us?"

"You're dodging the subject." I pressed. He started pacing again. He walked past Hope, exchanged a silent dubious glance. Much in the same way that chimps had learned to communicate with each other through body language, I guessed that Hope and Mercy had become…**exceptionally** good at **reading** Luthor. _Shiver_.

"Sooner or later you're going to have to learn that the world does not exist solely in black and white, Allen. There are shades of gray. Truth is variable. Prerogative…is everything."

"What about him?" I asked pointing to Jesse's beaten corpus on the floor. "Is he variable?"

"He is not damaged. Nothing a night in the E.R. won't fix."

"Then let me call an ambulance, Lex. Let him get some treatment, for the love of God…"

Luthor's brow furled in disapproval and he sighed dismissively. "He will be taken care of. He'll wake up in a LexCorp hospital tomorrow morning with his wounds healed and peace of mind."

I looked down at Jesse, who was beginning to stir. A shadow fell across his body, as Hope kneeled over my friend and held his arms down. She raised his head to waist-level as Mercy approached…with a slender syringe in her hand. I was too enraptured to look away, too concerned to try and stop them. _What if they're giving him painkillers?  
_

With a slight jab, Mercy rammed the syringe into Jesse's jugular. His jaw muscles tensed briefly as his body acclimatized to the needle, and he sunk back into Hope's arms. Mercy pulled the syringe back out, removed the needle from the plunger, and left the lab room. I watched her go, and then turned back to Lex.

"What did she do?"

"He **was** hurting. Now he isn't," Lex said idly, watching Hope lay Jesse carefully back down on the floor. Hope stood and looked at Luthor. "Call Orr," he said, and she promptly turned and left.

It was me, Luthor and Jesse.

"Why, Lex? Why are you doing this? Why the distractions…the lies…"

"You knew too much," he said cryptically.

"I had to. It was for…"

"You couldn't leave it alone, could you?" Luthor said. He was fast becoming agitated.

"I…wanted to get inside," I said quietly.

"Everything wasn't enough, was it?"

I knelt next to Jesse and lifted him in my arms, my eyes rolling over his body, inspecting him for injury.

"Please, Lex…don't hurt him…" I trailed off.

"Oh I won't hurt him anymore, Allen. He's served his purpose."

I stared at Jesses' lifeless face. "I...I know what you did. To those people. You used them. Destroyed their lives—"

"No, Allen," Lex said bluntly. I looked up at him in halfhearted confusion. "I **was** their life. They existed to serve me, and they were good at it. Most of them. Some of them went to the bitter end working for me."

"The ones that **didn't**….the ones that sold you out. You tore them apart…you took their lives…"

"As I could have with you," Lex said defensively. "The difference in academic." Silence. My brow creased in confusion as Lex continued. "I saw something useful—genuinely useful—in you. You could have been the heir to a legacy…"

"What about your daughter?"

" Lena can have the empire—she's welcome to it. But you…you could have carried the honor. The Luthor name. Written in stone for centuries to come. Men will marvel at it, women will fawn over it. It will be legendary. The hallmark of **human civilization**…"

Silence…I gathered my thoughts.

"The depths of human sacrifice and the pinnacle of achievement. The greatest namesake of our time…passed through the ages."

"And…I could have it all," I said quietly, ruefully.

"Yes." Luthor leaned closer to me and let his hand rest on my shoulder softly. It was…comforting.

"It is your prerogative. Your **choice**, Allen."

Silence. Interminable.

"The offer stands. Despite your erstwhile muckraking. Accept or reject," Lex said quietly.

_He's done so much for me. I can't throw it away. It's a god-damned education. I need it. I need it. I…need something…bigger. I need meaning. I thought I'd found it at college. With Jesse. It was about to be taken from me. Again. He stole it from me.  
_

_Mom. Dad. Sara. You're all the same. You let this happen. No better than him. No better than Mister Lex Luthor. No right to rule. No duty to serve. Lies and smoke. What's the point? Why do what you're destined to lose. The result is disappointment. Heartbreak. Loss. Always.  
_

_Jesus Christ. Snap the hell out of this. Right now, goddamn it. This isn't you, and it never was. You were never this much of a pussy. You were never a quitter. That's not the kind of man you were raised to be, and it's not the kind of man you're going to become. You were never one to give up. Don't fold now. Don't roll over like a fucking dog.  
_

_This isn't you. It doesn't have to be…Where's the Allen O'Neill who actually had a spine? The reporters instinct that had you looking between the letters on a page to find a meaning within a meaning?_

A thought. Random, and at the same time very well placed.

_This is all an elaborate set-up. The recording to get Superman's attention. The phone call to Lex's office from the person claming to be Jesse. They must have known I was in his office. How could they have known?  
__Sophisticated spyware technology, Allen. Luthor's probably got twelve cameras on this little lab room right now. Surprised?  
__No…__He could have just called me into town. Why did he have to bring Jesse into this?  
_

"Why Jesse? He's never done anything to you."

"We are all paying the price for the misgivings of the lower rungs, Allen," Lex said. "You shouldn't have to. Under my wing, you will learn everything you need to about…the world. Life. Everything. The greatest resources of this realm at your fingertips. You will be in the province of greatness. The vessel with which to carry on the line…the power."

"No."

Silence. I looked at Luthor, who wore a disgusted grimace.

"You refused me once before…don't make the same mistake twice. Your current state of mind notwithstanding, you need this Allen. You know it's true. You need me."

I lowered my head. Luthor approached; the sound of his footsteps heavy on the bare concrete floor. I heard the fabric of his jacket rustle, and rotated my eyes up to see a gun barrel pointed at my forehead.

"Some men are born to greatness, Allen. Some have it thrust upon them."

I stared sickly at Lex. My shoulders slumped, felt heavy—dragged down the rest of my body. In my arms, Jesse's limp body was losing heat. My breathing slowed, and my head sunk. Luthor cocked the gun. The bullet slid into the chamber, awaiting its destination.

_He's really going to do it.  
__I was wrong. God…how could I have been?  
__I never meant for this to happen. I only had the best intentions.  
__Superman…if you're out there… _

"It will be your choice…how you will be remembered."

* * *

**_To Be Concluded!_**


	16. The Curtain

Lex is a man who grew up in poverty and pulled himself out of it. He became so hopelessly enmeshed in his own dismal future that he lost the ability to love or have compassion, so he decided the only way to live in this world was to control everything around himself. Think Batman if Batman hadn't had rich parents. So he fought with the neighborhood kids (Perry White being one of them) and he ended up running petty thug schemes and taking money from good people to profit for himself. He studied and became brilliant, and finally hatched a scheme to kill both of his parents. He used the money provided by their death to amass his empire. Thereafter, eh became unstoppable. Irredeemable.

This much…has become clear to me. Thanks to Tim Drake, and Luthor's own revelations about himself—all of them questionably unintentional. He didn't intend for me to find out anything about him, his past, or acts he committed in the name of "progress."

But he did.

He laid it all out. He kidnapped and terrorized a defenseless boy. Encoded a false signal about Lois Lane across the city to attract Superman's attention. Had Hope contact me saying that Jesse was assaulted in the streets, when she did it herself. She was a pawn of the great Lex Luthor.

The great beneficent Lex Luthor. The all-knowing, all-seeing Wizard of Oz.

And I fucking fell for it.

_"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"_

Yeah, well, I did.

And it was going to cost me my life.

Luthor's finger wrapped around the trigger. And squeezed. In a flash, his hand was empty. Instead of firing a bullet into Allen O'Neill's head, Lex Luthor had done nothing more than make a fist. He stared disbelievingly at his clenched hand before him, his hand shaking angrily from the pressure he applied. The tendons stood taught against his skin. He looked up to the ceiling, his head rolled around the room slowly, looking for an answer. The conclusion was easily reached.

Superman had taken his gun. In **less** than a blink of an eye.

"Superman!" Luthor bellowed irately. The room was empty. Luthor glanced at the ceiling, and let his eyes rove around in their sockets. "Why not come out where I can see you?"

Superman appeared. It wasn't like he just materialized out of thin air. He…blurred into the room, like an out-of-focus projector. He was there. Staring Lex Luthor in the face. Few people had done it without calling off their dogs. Superman had nothing to be afraid of. Not from Luthor. Not when your skin can withstand rounds fired from an arcane Hungarian Mauser.

No, Superman had nothing to fear. Luthor could not harm him.

"Hyper-revolution," Luthor said plainly. "Utilizing your super speed to such a great velocity that you render yourself invisible. Curious. As to why you'd do it. Why not just come in and kick the shit out of me, send me to jail and reap what you've sown, Man of Steel?"

Superman stood motionless. "Because I don't want to."

"Right," Luthor said dubiously. "No use in doing something if you don't **want** to, eh, Superman? Tell me, how do I look from behind those glaring red eyes? From there it must look like I'm not playing by the rules."

Luthor stopped and inspected his fingernails. A grimace creased across his face and he came back to Superman. "This game has no rules, Man of Steel."

"Harming an innocent child?" Superman said quietly. It was still loud enough for Luthor to hear. "Is that a rule? Or just some sick incentive?"

Luthor's mouth curled up in an amused rictus. "Seduction of the innocent, Superman? Am I really that transparent?"

"Not anymore," Superman said confidently.

"Oh please," Lex said grimly, standing his ground. "You are not so big as to think you can sway events simply by saying so. That, my dear country cousin, is **irresponsible**…but predictable."

It came in an instant. Superman's hand shot forth from his body, wrapped itself strongly itself around Luthor's neck and hoisted the billionaire in the air.

"Let him go. Both of them.

Luthor was silent.

"I will rip you in two," Superman growled through gritted teeth.

"No you won't," Luthor challenged weakly. Oxygen was fleeing his brain rapidly.

Superman set Luthor down slowly, and stared at him.

"You're a monster," the Man of Steel muttered incredulously.

Luthor winced. "Who's the more monstrous? Dr. Frankenstein or his creation?" he murmured cryptically. He was trying to bait Superman; distract his focus simply by talking.

With a simple flick of his wrist, the Man of Steel had thrown Luthor violently into an assembly of machinery. Luthor slammed into the machinery—what looked like an oversized MRI machine--at an angle; his left arm flattened itself agaisnt the cold metal, and I barely made out a snap. Lex's arm was probably broken. Heslid to the ground with a dull thud, and clutched his left arm tightly.

I stood, and massaged my aching shoulder gently, still observing the situation keenly, and moved to Superman's side.

The chances of you repenting are slim, if nonexistent. How you do it, I don't know. I don't **want** to know how you get through the day. How you sleep at night…with all that you've done."

Luthor brought his head up to see Superman and, next to him, me. He stretched his neck to one side, and the sound of once-tense vertebrae cracking into place pierced the silence.

"You really aren't worth the effort," Superman said.

Through the pain shooting up and down Lex's left arm, his open fist tightened. He winced in pain, and growled.

"All these years, and you keep trying, and for what? Some master scheme of glory. Domination. You're tired, Lex. A one-trick wonder whose motivation is misguided and outmoded. Someone will always be ready and willing to take over your spot, Lex. Always. You can never have it all because someone always wants more. You can never be immortal because someone always wants to destroy you.

"You idiot!" Luthor snapped. **"You **did this! You turned him **against **me!

Superman's brow furled on concentration. He was thrown off, if momentarily. "What?"

"You turned him against me. You turned them all against me. And you're going to burn for it!"

Luthor was talking in riddles. His grip on…the situation was slipping. _Something's affected his mind._

"Lex…" Superman trailed off, his humanity taking over.

Lex's teeth clenched together and he scowled darkly. His psychosis, if it could be called that, was taking over. He reached a slow-moving hand into his jacket and writhed in momentary pain. It almost looked like he was clutching a broken rib.

"Well, Superman," Luthor grumbled ruefully, catching whisps of oxygen between words. "Why don't you get on with it? Put me in handcuffs and burn **numbers** into my forearm."

"No," Superman said, crossing his arms. "Not ever. That isn't my nature, and it never will be. You misjudge me, Lex. That…is your weakness."

"Your faith in humanity is yours," Luthor sneered. He moved his arm slowly inside the folds of his jacket. Like he was…reaching for something.

_Oh God._

"What are you thinking, Man of Steel?" Luthor asked plainly. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small revolver. "A little contingency of mine. **Tell me** you saw it with that x-ray vision of yours."

Lex sounded oddly pleading.

"Put it down," Superman challenged. _Why doesn't he just do what he did earlier. With the super-speed? Come on, Superman. Be a hero for once._

"Or what? You'll kill me? You don't have the guts. If you did you'd have done it years ago."

Superman stood firm. "There are four ways I can stop you."

"But you'd probably kill me in the process. And what's to say I won't turn the gun on myself?"

_Jesus_, I thought. It wasn't that he simply pulled another gun on us. It was **how** he did it. Slowly. Almost…methodically. I was too frozen to do…anything. My very breath felt short.

After a tense silence. Luthor cocked the gun and aimed it away from himself—into the darkness of the lab. I kept my gaze locked on Luthor, and not behind me…where it should have been.

"Save **this**, Superman." And he pulled the trigger.

The bullet shot from the gun in a spark, and pierced Jesse's spine in an instant—straight through one of the cervical vertebrae. Jesse lay on his side, beaten and half-conscious. The bullet struck his spine with frightening accuracy. His back jerked outward in shock, and then fell forward on the concrete. Blood spilled out of the wound like a burst dam.

* * *

Continued... 


	17. The End

Author's Note: The first two paragraphs of the last chapter pertaining to Luthor are derived from Neal Bailey of the Superman Homepage. Consider this due citation ;)

Author's Note 2: Now then, here is what seems to be the final chapter. This story's taken me considerably longer to construct and edit than 'Il Principe' **ever** did, but it was worth the wait. Or so I hope. In any case, here is the final installment, and thanks to you all for being steadfast readers, editors, reviewers and spell-checkers over the past few months.

* * *

The bullet had left a bloody, mutilated tear through Jesse's lumbar—probably severing the spinal cord and paralyzing him. A shallow puddle of blood, if it could be called that, formed on the floor. Superman started to walk past me.

"What are you doing?" I asked hastily.

"Move, Allen. I can save him."

Superman moved past me. I held out an arm, and stopped him.

"What do you think you're doing?" I asked.

"I'm saving him, Allen. You object?" For a moment, I could have sworn, Superman's eyes flashed red.

"I object to **you** causing more **damage**."

"I wasn't the one who shot him, Allen," Superman said pressingly. Almost…offended. _Yikes_. "Let me save him, Allen. I understand your fears, but Ican save this boy. You have to **let **me."

I lowered my arm slowly, and Superman hovered past me. I turned around to see Superman hunched over Jesses' body.

Superman…wanted to save Jesse._ Did he have to?_

"Can we move him?" I managed. My voice was barely a whisper.

* * *

Shadows stretched across the breadth of Lex Luthor's office, high atop the skyscraper bearing his name. He stood before the panoramic window, wrapped in darkness, staring at Metropolis at-twilight. Combined light from across the city seemed to leak into his office through the windows, nothing it in a dim yellow.

He lowered his arm to the desk beside him and picked up a goblet of Merlot, sipping once. Merlot was a softer wine; dry and rich in texture, easier on the palette. Few things were so easily…digestible in their ways…than a simple glass of Merlot.

Just moments ago, Lex Luthor had shot Jesse Wright. A friend of his young would-be ward, Allen O'Neill. Just to prove a point to Superman.

_You can't save everything, Man of Steel._

"Gains," Luthor said quietly, polishing off the wine. "Losses…"

He inhaled quietly, held it, and released. _What was the point?_

Retribution.

* * *

The hospital room was blackness. Yellow latticework from the window shades coursed its way across Jesse's bed. Dr. Anderson stood at the foot of Jesse's bed. He lifted Jesse's legs, adducted them and pedaled them slowly for three rotations. Anderson laid Jesse's legs down, pulled the blanket back over his feet.

"The bullet just missed his spine, Allen. We'll keep an eye on the kidney, but it looks like he'll be alright."

"Are you sure? What about the kidney?"

To my surprise, Superman had flown Jesse to the hospital, come back for me, and then stayed with us while the surgeons removed the bullet. **Much** to my surprise.

"Very," Dr. Anderson said. "Though the bullet came dangerously close to his right kidney. Depending on how the next few days shape up, he may or may not need a transplant. On the other hand...he might just get through this, providing he can handle the year and a half of physical therapy ahead of him."

Superman stood at Jesse's bedside, silent. I stood on Jesse's left side.

It was all coming together now. Why didn't I see it before? I should have. Stupid. I took it for face value, this crap with Lex. _So much for skepticism.  
_

Lex **used** me. He uses everyone…or so the legend goes. But why was I so special. Was I somehow more deserving than some other person? What made me so viable to Luthor? Why my life? Why try and ruin **my** life to suit **his** needs? _He wanted control. Yeah. That's what it is. He had to run interference._

Superman's eyes narrowed to a scowl, his jaw muscles tightened. He was scanning Jesse's body with his x-ray and microscopic vision.

"Are you sure, Doctor?"

"Yes, Superman. For the **third **time. You can do all the scans you want, but the evidence is there. Whoever shot him is either lousy enough to miss or good enough to hit just close enough to a problem area. Like I said…the physical therapy, but he'll live."

"Doctor, can I have a minute with him?" I asked.

Anderson looked at me puzzlingly for a second, then nodded his head slowly. He turned to leave. Superman gave me a curt smile, and followed Anderson out. I watched them go, listened for the door to click shut, and turned back to Jesse. He looked….eerily peaceful sitting in his hospital bed, furnished with hospital sheets, in a hospital gown.

"Jesse," I said silently.

His eyeballs flickered briefly underneath his eyelids. I repeated his name.

"Can you hear me?"

"Allen," he whispers, his lips parting slowly. "Where…?"

"Take it easy. What do you remember?"

"Hope…she busted into my room. Beat me and tied me up. Waltzed right out of the University with me."

My mind imagined the muffled screams coming from the trunk of Luthor's Rolls-Royce. _Shiver_.

"Then what?"

"Her and Mercy hauled me down to the lab. Went…Apollo Creed on me. Took….a hammer to my knees. Thoe gals...they're like Amazons..."

My hands formed into fists, and I mashed them silently into the bed sheets. _Injustice_. _Yeah, that's the only word for this_. "I'm sorry, Jess…"

"No," he said. "This wasn't your fault…"

"I wasn't there to save you."

"You didn't have to be," he whispers. "But I'm glad you were...don't let go of that."

* * *

"Allen?" Superman's hand was warm—heavy—on my shoulder. We were sitting outside of Jesses' room, in those ugly beige-colored waiting-room chairs straight from some hospital drama.

"What?"

"Are you going to be alright?"

"Yeah," I said, exhaling. "I will be. I only worry about Jesse."

"I'll tell you what," Superman said. His hand slipped off my shoulder and I turned to face him. He held a small off-white business card in his hand—outstretched to me.

"What is this?"

"Tell Jesse to call him when he gets a free minute. This man can help."

I took the card from Superman's hand and stared at it, confused for a moment. I heard a familiar whoosh, and by the time I looked back to where the Man of Steel was standing before…he's gone. One of the windows was open.

I snickered, impressed and surprised, and looked down at the card.

Clark Kent

_Daily Planet_, Editorial Staff

1938 Sullivan Street, Apt. 231

Office: 419-1986

Home: 419-3823

* * *

That night, I took a taxicab out of town. It cost me an arm and a leg, but it was worth it. For what I had in mind.

The neighborhood was familiar eneough. My parents had since moved to Keystone City, but..there was still one part of my old life still around here.

_Sara_.

I went for the front porch. I slowed my pace, slid a hand into my pants pocket, and stepped up onto the porch. My finger lingered in the air for a brief moment before pressing the doorbell.

_Inhale. Slowly. Let it out._

It was my luck that she answered.

"Allen," she said, half-surprised. "This is a welcome surprise." She crossed her arms, and leaned against the door frame.

My throat suddenly dried, and my voice cracked. "I uh…I don't know quite how to say this, so…here goes."

After a lengthy pause, I start speaking again: "I'm sorry. I said and did things…that I now regret."

"Allen…" she said.

"A few months ago, I made some…wrong choices. I said things that I didn't mean. Did things I didn't want to. But I did them anyway." My voice quieted. "I was an **idiot**."

"Allen," she said humbly. "You don't have to worry about it."

I bowed my head slightly. My eyes rolled up in their sockets to see Sarah. I was half-looking for a fist in the nose. God knows I deserved it.

"I love you, Allen. Don't ever think any different. We all make mistakes. Best we can do is learn from them. Become better people. Don't try to hide yourself, Allen," Sara said. "And don't let anyone else try to either."

In another time, Superman had spoken those words to me. Now...they had new meaning.

"What is it?" Sara's voice brings me back to reality.

"Nothing," I said reassuringly. "Nothing at all."

* * *

"Mr. Luthor?"

"Miss Teschmacher."

"I've got some good news."

"I could use some."

"The checkouts are complete at the _Planet_ and at the hospital. And there's someone on line three named 'Wilson'. He says it's **important**."

"Outstanding."

* * *

The (actual) End 


End file.
